Allied Works Architecture has garnered significant critical acclaim for approaching each project as an opportunity to create architecture resonant to its context, or as Cloepfil maintains: “To initiate an act of architecture is to initiate a dialogue.” Maryhill Overlook, a site work situated on a bluff above the Columbia River Gorge, is a continuous concrete structure that emerges from the ground and unfolds across the landscape, creating specific relationships and references to the surrounding environment. The recently completed Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, located next door to Tadao Ando’s Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, and the redesign of Edward Durell Stone’s Two Columbus Circle building as the new home of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City respond to their respective architectural and urban contexts. Established in 1994, Allied Works Architecture quickly gained national recognition for projects like the 2281 NW Glisan building, an urban residential and retail in-fill project, and the headquarters for the advertising firm Wieden + Kennedy in its hometown of Portland, Oregon. Highly refined detailing, attention to craft and materials, and an elegant geometric ordering characterize the studio’s resolutely modern work. Recent commissions include expansions to the Seattle Art Museum and the University of Michigan Art Museum in Ann Arbor.
