Who We Are
Foundation
John Ruble and Buzz Yudell began a close-knit partnership with Charles Moore in 1977 that was founded on design collaboration, deep client engagement, and profound respect for qualities of place.
Moore’s famously wide-ranging practice became the model as we and our growing team took on residential design, places of worship, coastal town planning, and community workshops in the first few years. The practice sprang forward from multiple sources— international competition wins and strategic partnerships vaulted us into new areas such as research facilities, campus planning, and waterfront redevelopment.
From the start, the work pushed boundaries and gained recognition within and beyond the profession; the firm’s design methodology embraced deep client and community participation and a climate-responsive approach to sustainable building and planning. The impact of the firm’s influence and innovation was recognized with the national AIA Firm Award (2006).
Engagement
An expanding spectrum of projects and expertise continues to define our practice today.
Our core focus on higher education has empowered our interconnected work in architecture and planning. Civic work builds on our decades of design for the U.S. Department of State, along with federal and state justice facilities. We work globally on urban housing and campus architecture. We engage locally and regionally in K-12 and Community College districts to advance inclusive educational environments.
We are deeply committed to collaborative design. In lieu of a signature style, we offer a highly evolved process in which design aspiration is pursued as a manifestation of client and project purpose. We work at the forefront of evolving issues and priorities -- sustainability, resilience, and diversity and equity in education. We learn from and leverage our engagement with client organizations, making each project a step in demonstrating the power of architecture to address the challenges and realize the ideals of contemporary society.
Exploration
Environmental pressures and technological innovations feed an accelerating loop of change.
Environmental pressures and technological innovations feed an accelerating loop of change. Yet the exciting opportunity remains to reassert core values and lasting principles within these cycles of transformation. Technology and big data, for example, can and must serve equitable, humanistic visions of the future.
In exploring new ways to respond to future needs with lasting solutions, we remain committed to the importance of bringing people together. We use the design or planning process itself as a creative experience that reinforces common interests and forges community. In this respect our integrated practice of planning and architecture is itself a critical feedback loop in which ideas that come from the communities we serve feed a progressive process of learning and validation, lighting the path forward.
