Architecture at Board & Vellum

We’re here to make the built environment more hospitable and delightful, as judged by those who actually experience it. We’ll match your project with the right team and then work closely with you on a design that achieves your goals and makes your heart sing.

Whether we’re designing for a public space or a private one, a commercial experience or a residential one, we’ll guide you through a rewarding process and deliver a space that not only works, but that you’ll love for years to come.

We often say it should take a while to give a tour of your space — because design in the details, and every little thing comes together to tell a story.

The built environment is incredibly complex, full of nuance, and requires that we balance how spaces look and feel with not only how they function, but how they’re actually put together.

As much as we care about aesthetics (a lot!), architecture is much more than what you see — it’s how a space works, how it doesn’t fall apart, how it withstands the weather, daily use, and the movement of the earth. It’s easy to forget how a building keeps you safe, comfortable, and healthy because when it’s done well, you never have to think about it.

Beyond the impact buildings have on us, their impact on the natural environment is immense, a fact we bear with great responsibility. We’ll propose options for approachable strategies to improve a project’s environmental footprint as a baseline, as well as options for more robust sustainable practices and features. We are dedicated to continual learning so we can understand and evaluate advances in building technology and material science. Helping clients deploy appropriate sustainable solutions is core to our effort to be responsible stewards of our neighborhoods, community, and planet.

With every project, there’s a lot to consider and a lot to balance, and it requires deep technical expertise paired with serious design chops to create compelling results.

We look for balance everywhere, including with the tools we rely on to ensure our process is as seamless as possible. We’ll never give up our favorite pens and trace paper, but we couldn’t do this as efficiently or as effectively without technology.

Though we may start with loose hand sketches iterating rapidly to explore design direction, as we hone in on a path to develop, we move into Revit, a Building Information Modeling (BIM) application.

Revit facilitates designing not only in plan and section, but in 3D, tracking every detail. It helps us quickly illustrate how our creative vision is actually buildable, allowing us to ensure the design intent is translated into a format a contractor can use to build your project.

Bringing a project from conception to completion requires many moving parts. Our process is structured to be fun, straightforward, and an effective pathway to take projects from start to finish. But, it’s not set in stone; it’s designed to be flexible because no project and no client are the same. We tailor our design, documentation, and services to the specific needs of each project, collaborating with you to bring a spectacular space to life.

We’re an experienced group of designers specializing in a spectrum of projects from new custom homes and residential remodels, to multifamily and mixed-use development, to restaurants, retail, office, and other commercial spaces — even complex campuses and public spaces.

Our architecture teams work not only independently or paired with our in-house interior design or landscape architecture studios, but also partner with other interiors and landscape firms. With so much internal collaboration natural to our process and a firm culture that encourages the open sharing of ideas from everyone, we make for great collaborators.

We aren’t stuck on one type of design, one style, or one way to make the work happen — our job is to listen deeply to our clients, provide creative leadership, and ensure projects meet goals, look great, and make people happy.