Architecture at Board & Vellum

We’re here to make places for people more hospitable and delightful — in real life, as judged by the people who actually experience them. 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 experience 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 how they’re actually put together.

As much as we care about aesthetics, 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 by humans, 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 beautiful, 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 integrated design, documentation, and services to the specific needs of each project, collaborating with you to bring a spectacular space to life.

We’re an interdisciplinary 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, and office spaces — even parks.

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

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

Board & Vellum offers comprehensive design services: not simply architecture, but also interior design and landscape architecture, all under one roof. Having multiple disciplines in-house allows us to build flexible teams of designers providing precisely the amount of services you need from any of our design disciplines — even if it’s just a consult — something you may not be able to do if you hired three separate firms.

Even when a project is firmly-rooted in one discipline, all our projects benefit from having the shared perspectives of a multidisciplinary design firm. It’s not uncommon for casual chats in the office to provide new insight into designs-in-progress.

Another way we take full advantage of our multiple in-house disciplines is through our design critique process. By opening the critique of a project beyond the immediate design team, we ensure proposed designs are comprehensively considered. Not all architecture and design practices make time for group crits, but we believe it adds value to our work and benefits your project.

From our cross-disciplinary teams and design critiques, to our transparent invoicing and dedicated project managers — our goal is to make this process an experience you enjoy, culminating in a project you love. We look forward to working with you!