Is our work beautiful? Does it lift the human spirit?

Beauty, we believe, embodies three pillars: sensory experience, mental interest, and connection to the environment. Sensory harmony allows people to perceive spaces fully. Cultural interaction sparks mental engagement through contrast and discovery. Consistent ties to nature invigorate visitors and learners alike. These qualities inspire new ways of thinking, encouraging people to see their world in a new light.

MSU Ozarks Education Center offers a hub for ecological education and research space.

Does it maximize value and minimize waste?

Stewardship means directing resources purposefully to achieve the greatest benefit for clients and communities, balancing immediate needs with long-term environmental responsibility. Design decisions respond to performance and practicality, supporting outcomes that are efficient, resilient, and sustainable. By maximizing value and reducing waste, projects create greater impact for the people they serve, informed by evidence-based design and a shared responsibility to care for finite resources.

The Metropolitan Community College Blue River facility serving over 800 students enhances the local workforce.

Does our work enhance health, safety, and welfare?

Our professional licensure safeguards public health, safety, and welfare. That responsibility expands to support physical and mental well-being, prevent accidents, and shape equitable environments for the people and communities served. Emerging technologies and data-driven approaches enable resilient spaces that adapt to diverse challenges, including climate change, and help ensure long-term security.

Serving more than 170 hospitals across the Midwest region, LifeServe Blood Center Headquarters, aims to support the organization’s vital work to save lives.

Does it help our communities thrive?

We seek to develop a fundamental understanding of the communities we serve. Work begins at the scale of site and context, while extending outward to engage the broader community and address larger challenges. Through engagement, opportunities and challenges come into focus, allowing solutions to contribute beyond a single project and respond to issues that matter at a wider scale.

Asilong Christian High School in West Pokot, Kenya with no municipal infrastructure is for children without access to secondary education otherwise.

Does our work steward a vital, regenerative ecological system?

Using whole systems thinking, projects build synergistic relationships between infrastructure, ecology, economy, and human productivity and prosperity. This approach supports healing and restoration, creating resilient environments with a net-positive impact. The built environment emerges as an extension of its place, its site, and the larger ecosystem it inhabits.

The Palomar College Maintenance and Operations building incorporates water-saving measures to inspire landscape features and site layout.

Does our work elevate our client’s mission and help them be more effective?

Design outcomes catalyze positive change by enhancing productivity, morale, and creativity in workplaces. Projects address both present and future needs, supporting client growth and long-term success. Data collection and analysis drive higher levels of performance, with metrics that reflect a human-purposed, integrated approach. Together, measured results and lived experience bridge the tangible and intangible dimensions of design impact.

The University of Iowa’s College of Nursing Modifications adapted its building interior to align with evolving healthcare needs and education.

Is our work durable, flexible, and sustainable for the future?

“Long life, loose fit” embodies an approach that allows spaces to endure and adapt to future needs. Resilient solutions support change through intuitive design that responds to client and user needs. The process extends beyond occupancy, learning from how spaces are actually used and adapted to support different activities over time.

Makers Quarter Block D, is a 6-story LEED Platinum and Net Zero rated office hub.

Does our work connect people to nature and to each other?

Efforts to restore and enhance the planet center on the belief that humans thrive in nature. By prioritizing positive impacts on people, places emerge where people want to be. Recognizing nature’s benefits for mental and physical health, design fosters meaningful connections to the natural world. Empathy shapes solutions for each community, while systems thinking integrates design layers to create mutual benefits and support sustainable ecosystems.

The Edmonton Airport Redevelopment transforms a defunct city airport by bringing the aspen forest back into the heart of the city.

Is our work welcoming for all?

Does our work create environments that are gracious and considerate of a broad spectrum of abilities—physical, developmental, behavioral, and sensory? Inclusive design is advanced as a shared standard, not a box to check. By approaching each challenge with empathy, grace, and humility, the work invites a broader conversation about how environments can more intentionally support equity and belonging.

The Harkin Institute at Drake University is a groundbreaking resource for universal design in architecture setting new standards embodying education, respect, and opportunity for all.