Institutional Architecture — Since 1988
Buildings where
societies
are made.
Courthouses, libraries, hospitals, university halls — civic structures that must hold their purpose for sixty years and their beauty for longer.
Whitmore Federal Courthouse
Denver, Colorado
Eleanor Marsh, FAIA
Founding Principal
"The courtroom brief asked for acoustic separation between witness and gallery — but civic architecture demands that justice be seen to be done. We resolved it with a single suspended glass baffle: sound absorbed, sight preserved. The jury could watch the architect argue for the building."
St. Clement Cancer Pavilion
Houston, Texas
David Osei, AIA
Senior Principal, Healthcare
"The energy code allowed us 12% glazing on the south facade. The oncology ward needed three times that — not for view, but for the specific quality of morning light that tells a patient their day has a shape. We spent four months arguing for an exception. We got it."
Meridian Public Library
Columbus, Ohio
Priya Nair, AIA
Principal, Civic & Cultural
"The library had been there since 1927. The community wanted the new reading room to honor what was there, but the program was three times the original footprint. We kept the limestone skin, stripped everything behind it, and built the new structure inside the old one like a letter inside an envelope."
A courthouse should make you feel the weight of what is decided inside before you reach the door.
A library's reading room is not a room — it is the quality of light at three in the afternoon.
In a hospital, every sightline is an argument. We argue for the patient.
140 buildings.
One conviction.
Harrington Hall
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor — 2022
Fourth District Courthouse
Portland, Oregon — 2019
Meridian Public Library
Columbus, Ohio — 2021
St. Clement Medical Pavilion
Houston, Texas — 2023
Start a
Conversation.
We take on a limited number of new commissions each year. The first conversation is about your institution's mission — not square footage, not budget. Those come later.
Thirty-Six Years
of Institutional Work
A 48-page PDF monograph — project photographs, principal essays, and the arguments behind every building. For institutions still building their shortlist.