COLWELL SHELOR creates vibrant and unique environments which respond to the client’s desires as well as the cultural and ecological requisites for each project. With each commission the firm makes every effort to balance program with appropriate responses to the needs of inhabitants of the built and natural world whilst aspiring to improve the relationship between people and the world they live in. Equipped with an extensive vocabulary of native vegetation combined with a detailed understanding of over-structure as well as structural elements, the studio strives to recognize and celebrate the organic and inert material morphology found in both the low and high desert regions of Arizona to the rolling plains of Kansas to the searing peaks of Colorado.

Principals Allison Colwell and Michele Shelor have collaborated with a wide range of other disciplines on some of the most imaginative and technically challenging projects in the state. The projects have ranged from large civic complexes to intimate domestic sanctuaries, each equally important in their own right. They are dedicated to creating simple yet dynamic landscape environments that are sensory and personal, yet fiscally realistic, sustainable, and socially responsible.