Signal Architecture + Research is a design studio that weaves architecture, experience, planning, and strategy together to create spaces and places of meaning that connect people to their position in the world.
Design Process
Our relationship with clients and communities becomes a partnership, where vision and pragmatism are intertwined. Our research based process balances function and environment with long term vision.
People
We are makers who advocate for the physical and ephemeral moments of design that elevate the human experience of place.
Design for people first
The design solution starts with the people who will use it and the place it occupies in the world. Developing a clear set of design goals inspired by history and culture to community and narrative, the story of the place becomes intertwined with the project. We ask: what is the story you want to tell about this place?
Signal strives for design expression that elicits the story of a place within its context, be it a public facility, home, park, cabin, or progressive infrastructure. At once of the place and for its people, we strive to make inspiring places to live, work, reflect, play, and learn.
Environment
From the regional context to the interior experience, we seek the outstanding and quiet patterns between place, material, and form to set the stage for life.
Whether rehabilitating a historic icon, envisioning a new home or designing a public facility, our projects seek time as a design factor, resulting in a balance of place, history, culture, future use, and longevity.
We see an interdependence between nature and building systems to inspire site specific sustainable design solutions. Materials, systems, climate, and users reveal the design potential, because it is made with them, for them.
We ask: How do you see yourself in this place in one year, twenty, fifty – and how will this architecture inspire you?
Research
Through a design process based in research and discovery, the studio tests and plays with the relationship between the real and intangible things that inspire delight.
Design Process
Begin at the beginning: we foster a research-based design process that reveals and builds upon the project vision, using trust, collaboration, and information as key criteria for a strong starting point. Leading with inquiry and listening, this effort establishes the functional, aesthetic, and quality requirements for a clear design approach that results in architecture that simultaneously reveals intangible and pragmatic ideas of placemaking and how we occupy physical space.
Partnership is critical to design ambition. With collaboration and the identity of the project clarified, we design to reveal the potential of shared visions. Functions, materials, systems, and the relationships between them are aligned and the architecture and experience of the place takes shape. Working with user data, physical and digital models, and a robust dialog, we build upon ideas and language to interpret needs into physical space and building form that celebrates the place and people it serves.
We ask: What does this project need to solve?
Team
Our approach is grounded in design clarity, experience, craft, and strategy. Together, our unique perspectives establish the firm as a design translator, weaving together project needs, site conditions, and the ambient forces of people and place into architecture. Our collective enthusiasm infuses every collaboration with the spirit of curiosity, resulting in dynamic places that resound with authenticity.
Accolades
-
American Architecture Awards
2022 Chicago Athenaeum
Fort Worden Building 305 Art and Education CenterArchitizer
2021 Architecture + Finalist, New Materials
Cottonwood Canyon Experience CenterHonor Award
2021 AIA Seattle
Fort Worden Building 305 Art and Education CenterArchitectural Review
2021 New into Old Awards - Short List
Fort Worden Building 305 Art and Education CenterAIA Seattle
2020 Washington Architecture Honor Award
Cottonwood Canyon Experience CenterArch Daily
2020 Building of the Year
Cottonwood Canyon Experience CenterArchitects Newspaper
2019 Building of the Year, Education Category
Cottonwood Canyon Experience CenterAIA Seattle
2009 Honor Award
Mercer Slough Environmental Education CenterKing County
Green Globes Award
Mercer Slough Environmental Education Center -
ARCADE
Georgetown Steam Plant
April 11, 2024W Report
Georgetown Steam Plant
January 22, 2022Parks and Rec Business
Cottonwood Canyon Experience Center
March 15, 2021Outdoors NW
Cottonwood Canyon Experience Center
June 29, 2020ArchDaily Brazil
Cottonwood Canyon Experience Center
June 2, 2020Treehugger
Cottonwood Canyon Experience Center
April 20, 2020Crosscut
Georgetown Steam Plant
March 2, 2020Parks & Rec Business
Cottonwood Canyon Experience Center
December 13, 2019Architects Newspaper Best of 2019
Cottonwood Canyon Experience Center
December 11, 2019Inhabitat
Cottonwood Canyon Experience Center
October 10, 2019Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce
Cottonwood Canyon Experience Center
December 12, 2018Proud Green Home
E-9 Trekking Cabin
March 21, 2018Building Design and Construction
Coos History Museum & Maritime Center
December 12, 2017Facilities Management
Coos History Museum & Maritime Center
December 11, 2017Daily Journal of Commerce
Northwest Railway Museum Archives
September 25, 2017Modern Steel Construction
Mercer Slough Environmental Education Center
August 14, 2015Seattle PI
Mercer Slough Environmental Education Center
January 26, 2009Landscape Architecture Magazine
Georgetown Wet Weather Treatment Station
Seattle Times
Georgetown Wet Weather Treatment Station
King5
Georgetown Wet Weather Treatment Station
Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce
Georgetown Wet Weather Treatment Station
CBS News
Georgetown Wet Weather Treatment Station
Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce
Georgetown Wet Weather Treatment Station
Rethinking the Future
Encompass Child Development Center
Healthcare Snapshots
Encompass Child Development Center
Snoqualmie Valley Record
Encompass Child Development Center
Archinect
Encompass Child Development Center
Snoqualmie Valley Record
Encompass Child Development Center
AN Interior
Fort Worden Building 305 Art and Education Center
ArchDaily
Fort Worden Building 305 Art and Education Center
Architectural Review
Fort Worden Building 305 Art and Education Center
Parks and Rec Business
Fort Worden Building 305 Art and Education Center
Daily Journal of Commerce
Fort Worden Building 305 Art and Education Center
Archinect
Fort Worden Building 305 Art and Education Center
Port Townsend Leader
Fort Worden Building 305 Art and Education Center
Port Townsend Leader
Fort Worden Building 305 Art and Education Center
Architect
Fort Worden Building 305 Art and Education Center