Civic and Commercial

Public buildings carry a responsibility that private projects do not. A Courthouse, a Library, a Science Center, a City Hall — these are buildings that belong to everyone. They must inspire and serve the buildings occupants and visitors alike.

Steve Simpson spent the first three decades of his career designing these kinds of buildings as a Design Principal at two of Portland's most respected architectural firms. He led civic, institutional, and cultural projects of significant public consequence — including the Multnomah County Central Courthouse, the Oregon State Capitol Renovation, the Juneau City Hall, the Sitka Sound Science Center, library projects in Beaverton, Hillsdale, Sherwood, and Mendenhall Valley, Alaska, and a number of collegiate academic buildings across the region. That body of work represents something rare — a deep, firsthand understanding of what it takes to design buildings that serve whole communities, not just individual clients.

Today, Steve brings that same thinking and discipline to projects at a more personal scale. He works directly with clients from first conversation to final detail — no layers of project managers, no hand-offs, no dilution of the original design intent. With Steve at the helm, small and mid-sized civic commissions, community-serving commercial projects, small institutional buildings and mixed-use developments benefit from a level of experience and attention that is almost impossible to find in a studio-oriented firm.

What he carries from years of large-scale projects, isn't just a portfolio — it's the ability to listen across a room full of competing needs and respond with architecture that feels like the only logical answer. He has worked with municipal governments, nonprofit boards, university committees, historical preservation bodies, and community groups throughout Oregon and Alaska. He understands that the measure of a great civic building isn't the day it opens, but the way the community feels about it in the following  twenty years. That understanding doesn't require a large firm. It requires the right architect.

We are currently accepting civic, institutional, and commercial projects in Oregon and Alaska. If you have a project that needs to serve your community with intelligence, inspiration and integrity, we welcome the conversation.