When star architects Cesar Pelli and Jean Nouvel were chosen to design two of Minneapolis’s largest cultural projects, the Minneapolis Public Library and the Guthrie Theater (respectively), they selected Architectural Alliance as their local associate firm. In both projects, the Minneapolis firm implemented and oversaw construction of the designs, putting together the documentation, even negotiating air rights for the Guthrie’s cantilever bridge with the Minneapolis Park Board.
Before “collaboration” became a buzzword and a way of practicing architecture, there was the novelist Ayn Rand’s iconic individualist Howard Roark, the cultural role model of many an architect. But there was also Architectural Alliance. The Minneapolis firm was founded in 1970, and the name emphasized “collaboration at a time when it wasn’t such a common word and such a common idea,” says Tom DeAngelo, a principal at the firm.
Collaboration, in this case, means involving clients, contractors, and the surrounding community in order to create a building that holds together structurally and fits in with its surroundings. While Architectural Alliance certainly designs and directs projects, the firm describes its overarching philosophy as coupling leadership with active inclusion.
Through the decades, Architectural Alliance has teamed with other local architecture firms on such projects as the St. Paul Courthouse and the Minnesota Children’s Museum. Architectural Alliance may be best known for applying its sleek, rigorous, and minimalist aesthetic—as lead design architect—on many local projects, including maintenance facilities for the City of Minneapolis, Allianz Life’s corporate interiors in Golden Valley, and the University of Minnesota’s Cargill Building for Microbial and Plant Genomics. Architectural Alliance is also nationally known for its aviation work, which includes three Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport concourses, as well as projects in Alaska and Wisconsin. In this specialty, the firm primarily serves as the lead design architect, working with local collaborators.
The Guthrie and library projects, both of which started in late 2001, came at a fortuitous time. After 9/11, many of Architectural Alliance’s aviation projects were put on hold. In 2001, DeAngelo says, the firm employed about 100 people and earned approximately $10 million in architectural fees. While many architectural firms, locally and nationally, suffered severe cutbacks and layoffs as a result of corporate and government pullbacks, Architectural Alliance held steady, with the Guthrie and the library supplying 10 to 15 percent of the firm’s fee income during the past few years.
Now that those projects are completed, the challenge is “to fill in the gaps” with new work, DeAngelo says: “We can show other potential clients that we have the systems in place and the expertise to succeed as their associate architect.”
Both projects were fun, DeAngelo adds, laughing at the memory of Nouvel’s international team arriving at 10:00 each morning, clouds of cigarette smoke billowing out the windows of their Ford Fairlane. He also says that “it was rewarding to see how the big ideas behind the library and the Guthrie influenced those projects, and to apply the skill it took to get those strong visions implemented. But the fact that they were fun projects and we did them well leaves us with great memories.”
