Studio

We are architects–Alliance, a design practice of lowercase and uppercase architecture: a–A. Home is Toronto, Canada, a city we love and have helped to shape over the past 20 years. At a–A, we are intimately engaged in the project of the city and in exploring nuanced ways of defining and redefining it; articulating and advancing its development through thoughtful responses to today and tomorrow’s urban questions, big and small. Building on a history of inventive and responsive solutions to housing and density, the project of a–A is to meaningfully contribute to, as well as continue to lead, ongoing conversations about how the contemporary city takes shape.

Approach

Whether it is in a major metropolitan centre where our studio is based, or across the country and other geographic borders, the work of our office is oriented towards a careful consideration and rigorous interrogation of built form. We explore architecture in a unique way, asking how can we take a simple geometric form and give it a sense of material presence specific to its location. We research, we experiment, and look for inventive ways to address the relationship of the building to the street, to public space. We find character in form and materials. Attentive to context and community, use and user, our work aims to strengthen the bridge between people and place. But whether it is a school, a gallery, an office or residential tower—or sometimes an entire neighbourhood—we start from the ground up and are grounded by our commitment to practising a meaningful and sustainable urbanism