Our firm is interested in projects that engage directly with clients as passionate about their work and lives as we are about ours. Our firm is not so much focused on a project type as much as we are on creating thoughtful, useful and beautiful design solutions through a highly collaborative design process. Over the past several years, our work has focused on commercial space, performing arts spaces, single and multi-family residential and social infrastructure projects.
Hammersley Architecture was founded in 2008. Our studio is located in the historic Fine Arts Building on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. We explore the potential of architecture through both projects and speculative works.
Our Approach page explains in further depth our attitudes towards and goals for our work.
Our work regularly consists of four key elements - People, Program, Place and Concept. We study and combine each of these elements throughout the design process.
The resultant built form is a completed project that not only connects beauty with use, but also through those relationships relate people to their surrouding physical space.
It is our belief that this process creates meaningful, timeless work that responds to both the general human condition and to the unique qualities of the individual user
People are what we create our work for; clients, end users, casual passers-by. People help to generate the vision and ideas for our projects. Our work is driven by the needs of the general and the specific, and we look to improve on the human condition through input and collaboration.
Simply put, the Program is what the building is supposed to do for the people using it. Program can be complex or very straightforward, but ultimately, this crucial element exists to define the project's overall purpose- how will it serve its constituents, from the individual to the group. However, and equally as important, program also serves to challenge traditional ways of arranging space and uses. Program can introduce different and inventive relationships between spaces that expand the way a client thinks of work, how people live, and how communities gather.
Place describes a location's natural and physical conditions. The site itself helps to define a project's form, organization and use through its size, relationship to adjacent built work and physical surroundings. Additionally, natural phenomena -the passing of time and season- are reflected on the site and tie the earth and the sky together through this repetitive process. The resulting architecture serves to link the two, and in doing so, anchors itself to both.
Concept We believe the most lasting architecture is a combination of the practical and the experiential, and as such insist upon tying Program, People and Site together through the use of a unifying idea that serves to guide the overall formal and intellectual design of the work.
Brian is the principal and founder of Hammersley Architecture. Brian leads the firm's design and research work and oversees the firm's daily operations. He is active in educating the general public and students alike about the practical and poetic relationships between architecture and well-being, and has held adjunct teaching positions at IIT's School of Architecture and UIUC's Graduate School of Architecture. Brian holds a Master in Architecture from the University of Florida and a BS in Architectural Studies from the University of Illinois Urbana - Champaign School of Architecture. Brian lives with his wife and two daughters in Oak Park, Il. He is an avid cyclist, experimental cook, backcountry adventurer and house music DJ & producer when not at work! Keep an eye out for him commuting to and from the office down Madison Street...
Lisa Wronski, Robert Geurtin, Anton Tonchev, Nery Umana, Jacob Wall, Meredith Phillips, Matthew Hamaker, Chang Woo Hong, Boris Angelov, Gianna Demertzis, Matt Busscher, Alex King, Hye Sun Jeong, Greg Gouwens, Keith Evans, Akhil Badjatia, Nick Barrett, Robert Yuen
Brain is the principal and founder of Hammersley Architecture. Brain leads the firm’s design and research work and oversees the firm’s daily operations.
He is active educating the general public and students alike about the practical and poetic relationship between architecture and well-being, and has held adjunct teaching positions at IIT’s School of Architecture and UIUC’s Graduate School of Architecture.
Brain is the principal and founder of Hammersley Architecture. Brain leads the firm’s design and research work and oversees the firm’s daily operations.
He is active educating the general public and students alike about the practical and poetic relationship between architecture and well-being, and has held adjunct teaching positions at IIT’s School of Architecture and UIUC’s Graduate School of Architecture.
Hammersley Architecture is a full service architecture firm with a wide range of project experience and technical expertise. Our services include
Building Program Development
Schematic Design
Design Development
Construction Documents
Permitting
Bidding & Negotiation
Construction Administration
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