Darian Jon Fernando is often mistaken for a basketball player or a linebacker. When he stands up, his head scrapes most conventional-height ceilings. Actually, spatial matters interest him professionally because the 29-year-old Manhattan resident was trained as an architect at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. After spending several years apprenticing at various architectural firms in New York City and New Jersey, Mr. Fernando is starting his own company. He’s already thinking of establishing a global practice.

“I am just as much as a New Yorker as I am an American,” Mr. Fernando said yesterday. “In fact, I know Thailand better than California; I have spent more time wandering the Raffles Hotel in Singapore than the byways of Chicago. Traveling and living in other places has given me a better understanding of what it means to be an American than years of listening to American civics, history, and achievements ever could have. As an American overseas, I found that self-description and reflection was required in order to explain one’s existence to people who didn’t know what America was all about. I enjoy being an ‘ambassador’ of sorts. Now global travel and friend-making is a firm part of my annual agenda.”

That agenda may have to be modified a bit as Mr. Fernando sets about creating a new business. He’s teamed up with Janette Mendoza, a young architect from the Philippines, for what he says will be “a collaboration of similar aesthetic minds and different technical skills of two people from different cultures.

“To achieve success and fame in my line of work, hanging out one’s own shingle is the most likely way to success,” Mr. Fernando said. “It is also one of the scariest things that I have ever done.”

Another daunting enterprise on the horizon is likely to be marriage. His Indonesian girlfriend, Imelda Noviana Paranna, is a physician at Jakarta.

So with all this huge changes in life, what’s his investment strategy? Mr. Fernando says he’s sticking with the ING group of funds. “Right now, I’m trying to build up my IRA – I want to sock money away and not worry about it until retirement,” he said. “I’m also young enough to be aggressive in my investment – so I’m into international growth funds, an index-plus large-cap fund, and a global science and technology fund.”

Mr. Fernando says he prefers to let professional money managers handle his money because “I just don’t have the personality, or the time, to monitor stock prices by the hour. I just want my money to grow – and I’d prefer to devote my time to making money through architecture.”