We approach each project we undertake for a client with care and rigor. At the same time, we as designers are aware of our role in shaping the built environment, and our responsibilities to the community. Along with working collectively and cooperatively, we believe in contributing to the public good through socially responsible design. By incorporating a diversity of voices and viewpoints into our design process, we believe that the services we provide to the client are also extended into the public realm. The same values that drive our work reflect the values that make our communities work – productivity, diversity, cooperation, knowledge, responsibility, vitality, and change. These are urban values. We believe that this gives our work an informal vitality that reflects the diversity of many different cultures and circumstances in close proximity to each other.
The diverse backgrounds of our office staff also allow us a larger view of global influences and references, while still allowing an inclusive embrace of our unique regional culture and history. A respect for history and memory, more than tradition, informs our search for what is appropriate and a proper “fit” of site, program, and place.
In recognizing the importance of our regional landscape and climate, we also strive to maintain a healthy respect for the connection to nature in our projects, while recognizing that the challenges of our new century involve not just the pursuit of environmental sustainability, but also cultural sustainability.
We believe in the honest and direct expression of program, materials, and technical resolution of materiality in a manner that is always at the service of spatial ordering and constructional logic.
Our philosophy is reflected in the types of work we feature here: