Design Services

We’re here to support your project goals, from start to finish.

Core Services

We offer a range of services to meet the needs of every client - homeowners looking to improve their living spaces; small business owners creating or expanding their facilities; developers of all sizes looking for support in bringing their projects to life; landowners who need help finding the right idea to move forward with; community organizations looking for support; city governments looking for project management support; and many more.

  • Our first love. We excel at crafting spaces that support their occupants in their particular needs through attentive care to details and collaborative design strategies.

  • Environmental, Equitable, Economic
    We have the experience and knowledge necessary to help you create holistically sustainable projects that weave innovative design strategies into all aspects of the project in ways that benefit all users and stakeholders. We’re passionate practitioners of Passive House and WELL design strategies due to their ability to create highly-efficient buildings that are also healthier and more comfortable for occupants. We also have experience in creating the documentation for many certifications, including Passive House, WELL, Enterprise Green Communities, etc.

  • Even if a project doesn’t require design services, we’ve successfully helped guide them through regulatory, funding, construction, and many of the other processes necessary to get from an idea to a highly successful project outcome.

  • We love partnering with passionate local organizations and individuals in helping them realize their visions for supporting and improving the world around them, whether through murals and interactive art, installations, education and engagement workshops, and more.

  • Preserving culturally important buildings and spaces is something we’re very passionate about, and we know that careful documentation and thoughtful detailing often makes all the difference in restoring these icons to their former splendor.

  • Our experience with development projects has provided unique experience and skills with many of the processes involved, including but not limited to planning and design support, regulatory and investor support / materials, and more.

Design Specialties

Our design team has experience in a wide range of projects at all scales, from small interior renovations and murals all the way up to sustainable neighborhood planning and development, and everything in between. Have something in mind? We pride ourselves on our flexibility and adaptability, so even if your goals don’t fit neatly into any of these categories we’re still happy to discuss how we can help.

  • Crafting Beautiful and Comfortable Spaces for Every Unique Client
    We closely collaborate with our clients to ensure not only a thorough understanding of the practicalities of a home, but also its aspirations. Every client’s unique needs energize projects. In addition to highly sustainable and health-focused design strategies, we ensure that a client’s home puts their well-being first.

  • Housing Design that Meets the Triple Bottom Line
    Through our expertise in residential design, highly-efficient sustainable design techniques, and healthy material selection, we help clients and developers craft incredible living spaces that put their occupants’ comfort first, resulting in highly-desirable and environmentally-responsible rental properties.

  • Providing Exciting and Functional Spaces
    We support the needs of businesses of all shapes and sizes, creating exciting and effective spaces for their needs within exacting constraints and budgets.

  • Safer and Healthier Homes for All
    Everyone deserves a home that fully supports their needs, comfort, and well-being. Through partnerships with local organizations and nonprofits, we’ve worked to revitalize existing housing stock into affordable and energy-efficient living spaces that utilize healthy materials, all in an effort to provide homes that are more affordable, easier to maintain, and support the health of residents of all ages.

    Partner Organizations
    Mercy Housing
    Growing Together
    Kendall Whittier Neighborhood Trust
    Stride Development

  • Empowering the Communities Around Us
    Through collaborative partnerships with developers, community members and organizations, nonprofits, and city leadership, we help to facilitate the creation of vibrant and supportive community environments that honor local history while creating exciting opportunities to build on for the future.

  • We partner with passionate developers, organizations, municipalities, and stakeholders to collaboratively develop highly-sustainable and pedestrian-focused communities that help occupants of all backgrounds thrive.

Our Sustainable Design Strategies

From the moment we begin a project, we are already considering how to design and build to a higher standard. While every project has unique requirements and goals, these core strategies form a design baseline that prioritizes health, comfort, durability, longevity, and energy efficiency in holistic ways.

Spaces for Living

Our projects prioritize the support, comfort, and well-being of occupants through the use of:

  • Non-toxic materials

  • Improved HVAC to provide higher air quality and humidity control

  • Ample natural lighting to support healthy routines and circadian rhythms

  • Excellent thermal comfort throughout the year, no matter the weather outside

Designed to Scale

It’s common for projects to set their initial goals through how much can afford to be built, maximizing the build. We push clients to instead carefully consider how much space is actually needed to meet their goals.

Not only does this push clients start their projects with careful thought and consideration, but it also results in projects that are scaled appropriately and better able to meet budget requirements.

Performance & Durability

Our design standards incorporate exterior envelope detailing and strategies that greatly exceed typical construction, resulting in both greatly improved energy efficiency and highly durable assemblies that reduce operational and maintenance costs.

With a minimal construction cost increase (typically 2-5% depending on project type), these strategies offer stark reductions in utility, maintenance, and equipment costs over the lifetime of the project.

Designed to Last

Our goal is for our projects to outlast us through a focus on craftsmanship from even the earliest stages of design.

Houses that can serve a family for generations, that support the residents aging in place. Affordable housing that supports countless residents over a longer lifespan than its peers. Projects that are financially viable and sustainable, even through market instability and challenges.

Passive & Active

We prioritize passive design strategies, which typically involves combining typical building materials in more thoughtful and intentional assemblies with proven performance improvements.

When it best serves a project, we are also capable of incorporating active systems such as solar, geothermal, wind, energy storage, and more.

Minimizing Waste

Efficient resource usage is a key part of the design process from the very beginning. Any opportunity to reuse spaces, structures, resources, etc is carefully considered and evaluated.

Even in new construction, every attempt is made to select products and assemblies that reduce new material usage whenever feasible in order to minimize our environmental impact.

Thoughtful Materials

It’s crucial to select materials that balance occupant health, environmental responsibility, longevity and maintenance, and affordability. Over our many projects we’ve become familiar with many products and systems that balance these aspects well, with different options that meet each particular project’s needs and budget.

Sharing Expertise

We collaborate with teams and partners across the Midwest, and we view every project and partnership as an opportunity for all team members to learn and grow as sustainable designers, builders, and stakeholders.

Through these experiences, we’re part of the movement to help push our local construction industry, developers, and more to envision projects at a much higher standard.

Key Components of Building Performance & Comfort

The following systems and strategies are the fundamental building blocks of sustainable design and construction.

  • When possible, careful consideration of a building’s relationship to major site elements, solar orientation, prevailing wind patterns, and more can form a key foundation for building performance and comfort by improving access to the beneficial environmental aspects of a location.

  • Continuous and thickened insulation is one of the most fundamental ways to greatly improve building performance and thermal comfort, no matter the project location. Whether in warm or cold regions, heavier insulation helps keep interior spaces comfortable year-round and greatly reduce the cooling / heating needs of a building as a result.

  • Windows and doors are often an afterthought on construction projects and very prone to value engineering to reduce costs. Due to the fact that these aspects of a building are critical weak points in a continuous thermal envelope, careful product selection and detailing are crucial to ensuring that every exterior wall performs well while still filling the spaces with natural light.

  • Highly airtight detailing and construction methods are critical aspects of building performance and comfort, reducing both drafts and wasted conditioned air. Airtightness requires careful attention to detailing and product selection, as well as close collaboration with construction teams to ensure performance metrics are met.

  • Higher levels of airtightness is highly beneficial, but also require thoughtful and careful consideration of how ventilation is treated within the spaces to ensure that the project is as consistently comfortable and efficient as possible.

  • A key tenet of energy efficiency is sizing systems to your specific needs. It’s very common for HVAC systems to be oversized or improperly balanced. Ensuring that the mechanical system matches the building parameters and how spaces will be used greatly increases comfort and building performance.

  • Our projects are designed and built to use only electrical utilities, avoiding natural gas and other fossil fuel-based sources for heating and cooking purposes, fireplaces, etc. Gas appliances, although common and inexpensive, create a whole range of challenges and issues that run contrary to our team’s prioritization of occupant health, comfort, and safety, as well as to environmental responsibility.

  • Thermal bridging occurs when outdoor temperatures (hot or cold) are able to infiltrate and affect the interior spaces by traveling through an unbroken path of solid materials from the exterior face of the building to the inner wall elements. These are very common in typical construction, including but not limited to wall studs, window frames, concrete, etc. Not only does thermal bridging impact comfort and energy, it’s also a very common cause of condensation and mold within building assemblies.

Active efficiency strategies include specific systems and equipment to gather electrical energy from site elements, whether solar, wind, geothermal, etc, as well as battery systems to store gathered energy on-site. While these are invaluable strategies, given their upfront costs and highly variable potential based on site constraints we prefer to prioritize passive design strategies that improve the core construction of the building itself such as those listed above (higher insulation, airtight construction, etc), using active systems to supplement building performance when possible.

Let’s Build Something Great Together

CONTACT

We’re always looking for new opportunities and are comfortable working on a range of project types and scales. Please get in touch and one of our project managers will contact you about beginning the proposal process.