At Alliiance, we are driven by curiosity and research—creating inspiring, lasting and sustainable spaces that elevate the human experience.
We design buildings and spaces that are authentic to both people (client and community) and place (physical and cultural context).
Alliiance's architecture, planning, and interior design practice is focused on bringing our clients’ dreams into reality. We strive to create inspiring, well-conceived, and carefully detailed design solutions that address our clients’ needs; reflect and enhance their unique culture; and create positive and enduring connections to their ecological and physical context.
We achieve this by building an open relationship with each client and by building a customized team of design, engineering, and construction specialists who together can contribute to the success of the client’s project. Strong and communicative project management, a hallmark of our practice, compliments our design activities in a manner that respects budgets, schedules, and other multiple measures of design success.
Alliiance Design Studios
Our work serves both public and private clients, ranging from major institutions and international corporations to regional community groups and private businesses. Our studios focus on providing creative planning, design, and technical leadership to each project type. Our specialized market areas are led by principals and senior staff members who bring unique and seasoned experience to each project.
Design Approach
Celebrating our clients' community
Social interaction enriches the lives of people and builds an interactive and connected community. Searching for inventive ways to reflect our clients’ unique social goals enhances their community and is an exciting source of design ideas.
Connecting to place
Our built work is always part of a greater context. Whether relating to an urban community, expanding an existing or historic structure, or building on a natural site, we strive to inventive design relationships with a place. We create specific and enduring connections, enhancing community identity and a sense of connection to the world.
Building a sustainable future
We encourage our clients to consider strategies that will minimize a project’s environmental and ecological impact, ensure its adaptability to future change, and enhance the experience of its users. We carefully evaluate the use of technology and consider its impact on operations during a project’s lifetime. We look beyond today and seek passive, integrated solutions with reliable technologies that will add value tomorrow.
Design solutions that both inspire and perform
We strive to gracefully enhance the social life of our buildings, enriching the lives of the people who use them. We relate our designs to their physical context, enhancing their communities while fulfilling functional and technical expectations. And importantly, we evaluate how our designs perform in relation to our clients’ social and environmental goals.
Design Process
Discovery Process
Be begin each project by organizing a visioning session with the client leadership team, often employing unique client engagement or visual listening tools, topical evidence-based research, and benchmarking data. Analysis of the site or building, applicable building or zoning codes, space or building performance criteria, and functional relationships are assembled to define the project needs and the client’s goals. Project sustainability objectives, budget, and schedule expectations are discussed. These Discovery Phase activities provide a strong foundation for our design.
Detailing and Executing the Design
We take great pride at Alliiance in providing both well-conceived and carefully detailed projects. Our design documentation and construction administration services address issues of sustainability, building performance, reliability, ease of construction, and cost effectiveness. We work collaboratively with builders to assure the highest value for our clients.
Performance-Based Design
Throughout our process, and after occupancy, we assess how our design performs in response to the social, environmental, and economic goals defined at the onset of the project. Post-occupancy evaluations, assessment of sustainability performance, and operational commissioning provide evidence-based data that creates a continuous improvement cycle for our clients and our team.
Research Process
Our research is a practice-based process that begins and ends with the user. We use both qualitative and quantitative approaches to assess existing conditions; understand project drivers; investigate and iterate solutions; and evaluate user outcomes. Our process is data driven and rigorous, allowing our designs to be responsive and thorough. Research at Alliiance is further informed by established internal working groups that focus on equity and community; health emissions and resilience; and change management.
Innovative Applications
As our name implies, Alliiance builds diverse and cross-disciplinary teams—customized to each project—to optimize the creative application and potential of this research. Internally, research is shared across disciplines and project types, to ensure knowledge is cumulative and to increase opportunities for discovery through new combinations of ideas and data. We are committed to implementing innovative processes and design thinking that reveal new insights for our clients—elevating design solutions and enhancing the user experience.