Ask.
We know that the best buildings are realized when our design team works collaboratively with our client community and that creativity, expertise, and engagement are key to articulating their building’s complex uses and goals.
Our iterative planning and design process draws out the interests of a wide range of stakeholders. We pride ourselves on being excellent communicators, facilitators, and listeners. Guided by curiosity, expertise, and patience, we strive for an equitable and open process that uncovers the community’s priorities and challenges. With our client as partner, we build a vision around that input, assuring the design expresses and embodies the community’s unique values.
Design.
Our deeply held belief is that design is about people. We create places that positively impact individuals, our communities, and our environment by connecting people to place and to each other.
We believe in the capacity of design to deepen the human experience. Good design delights us and enriches our relationship with others. Each detail matters—from good acoustics to the cadence of daylight as it moves across a space. When woven into a unified whole, the resulting architecture enlightens our senses.
By drawing upon the richness of a building’s context and community, we design each project as an expression of its place. We use appropriate scale and thoughtful materiality to imbue each space with humane character. The result is a building that is memorable, enhances its place over time, and instills belonging and pride in every member of the community.
Knowing that our buildings will serve future generations, we design with an abiding commitment to sustainability. We believe each project has the potential to advance social equity, well-being, and environmental health. Our projects are recognized for groundbreaking achievements in high performance design, from net-positive energy buildings to healthy places for learning. Each is informed by its context, celebrates its place, and nurtures curiosity, inspiring the next generation to become creative stewards of their communities and environment.
Learn.
Our commitment to education runs deep. We strive for ever higher standards of design excellence by embracing lifelong learning and discovery. We consistently evolve our approach, methodologies, and technologies in the pursuit of better buildings.
We are united by a common purpose—to design spaces that empower learning and positively impact future generations. This guiding principle has driven our practice for more than five decades and continues to inspire us today. After all, a school building is about more than function and truly achieves its purpose when it stirs a sense of wonder and delight, fosters community pride, and instills a love of lifelong learning.
