Allied Works Architecture

Allied Works is the most accomplished architectural firm in Portland. Fortunately for them, but unfortunate for you and me, they only work on select high profile and correspondingly big budget projects, most out of town. But you can see some of their work, for free, around Portland, to be inspired.
I worked on the architecture committee of one of their small clients who were part of a larger project at the big ad agency, I believe their second commission. The principal is a fearless visionary, not Howard Roark-​Frank Lloyd Wright arrogant, and they hire very smart and easy to work with associate architects. We had a limited budget, which they honored. All the surfaces were clean and simple, with a few surprise materials such as a frosted glass wall.
Early commissions include the interior of the main Saucebox Bar, Blue Hour, some mysterious landscape structures at the Maryhill Museum in Goldendale and the W+K ad agency offices, converted from a decaying ice storage warehouse to a seismically secure beehive with a soaring atrium. They designed the new Lincoln Hall entry, a few regional homes and are at work on the PNCA 511 building interior. Allied designed the interior of PDX Gallery, and if you make a road trip, you can see their Seattle Art Museum (North Wing) and Camp Caldera in Sisters, Oregon
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They also did the controversial redesign of the NYC Museum of Arts and Design
. In this case, good redesign won out over questionable preservationism.
Their signature is a series of clean planes and lines, which either pass over and through one another, or almost meet at 90 degrees, leaving a gap. They have a specialty in designing art museums and galleries where the planes are places to hang art and the gaps to admit illumination. Favored materials are minimalist and honest. For W+K, they hired Louis Kahn’s concrete foreman for an exposed, stories high, pristine concrete pour.
The front of their Portland office is now a gallery programmed by PNCA’s MFA art students, but the shows are never publicized.
They have done residences, but rarely. They are a great firm to refer to your grandparent that sits on the building committee of a major art museum looking for a new building.
For a sense of Cloepfil you can see
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For most Unilocal readers, they will be an example to contemplate, over cocktails at Saucebox, Bluehour, or an event at the ad agency, a Portland business that is world renowned.