We are honored and humbled to be recognized by the AIA with the 2019 Architecture Firm Award—the highest honor the professional organization can bestow on a practicing architecture firm. We are thrilled to receive this award in recognition of our firm’s long commitment to design excellence, improved building performance and a culture of mentorship and equity. Our firm strives to create boldly original buildings for science and healthcare that are as profoundly humane in their accommodation of needs as they are pioneering in their pursuit of environmental performance.
Do great architecture
Our work embodies the fusion of design and performance, believing that beautiful buildings perform beautifully. We are honored to be the first practice to be nominated for the Firm Award by both the AIA Committee on Design and the AIA Committee on the Environment. In our home region of New England — a region of extraordinary design talent — we have won more awards for design than any other firm. While we are proud that we continue to be recognized with design awards, we are equally proud that the energy use buildings continues to reduce and our long-term participation in the AIA 2030 Commitment.
make a difference
We find outlets where we can put our creative skills, and those of our collaborators, to work for the good of our community. Our pro bono work ranges from locally to internationally, from working with local high school students to working with a community to re-energize forgotten downtown spaces into vibrant gathering places to the design and construction of a maternity ward and neonatal care unit for a hospital in Haiti.
have fun
Although our office can have the buzz of a university design studio, PAYETTE shows that you can have a culture of design excellence without a culture of continual allnighters. You can change the world and still have time for your family and community. PAYETTE’s Young Designers Core (YDC), a grassroots organization founded in 2000, promotes the growth of emerging professionals, supports their progress toward licensure, and supplements our daily project work with educational opportunities. The YDC aims to provide a holistic professional development network through the core values of knowledge sharing, licensure, culture and mentorship.
Regenerative leadership
Our firm thrives on the interdisciplinary talents of our leadership. Hear from four of our principals. These principals embody our firm’s values and share a desire to push the firm forward.
Reflecting on our Roots
We are honored and humbled to be recognized by the AIA with the 2019 Architecture Firm Award. While this honor recognizes the firm we are today, it’s also a reflection of our history. Our roots extend back to 1932, when Fred Markus, an engineer, and Paul Nocka, an architect, founded Markus and Nocka, a small architecture practice in Boston that focused exclusively on hospital design.
impactful buildings
It’s only through a thorough understanding of how buildings such as hospitals, laboratories and institutions function – and how their inhabitants use them, that we are able to propose new configurations of space and systems that permit people to heal, make discoveries and innovate.
Prosperous international practice
Our 30-year relationship with Aga Khan University been a cornerstone of the firm we are today, a firm recognized by the AIA with the 2019 Architecture Firm Award. We are proud of the legacy of work we have produced and continue to develop with the Aga Khan University – which was the first of many fruitful international relationships in our portfolio.
STUDIO TOUR
When we moved into our space on 290 Congress Street in 2011, our goal was to create a studio that reflected the way we work. An office that empowers collaborative inquiry, vigorous debate and the synthesis of the best ideas, irrespective of origin. Moving away from our previous six-floor office building with a series of isolated cubicles, today our single floor open studio fosters collaboration and cross-studio dialogue which not only improves our collective intelligence, but also improves the design and performance of our buildings.
reflecting on A’19 conference on architecture
This was an exciting year for our firm at 2019 AIA Conference on Architecture. As the 2019 Architecture Firm Award recipient, we are honored to be recognized and join a long history of prestigious, high-impact firms and celebrate this prestigious award with our colleagues.
an interdisciplinary design process
While we are primarily an architecture firm, we have always rejected singular authorship. We sat down with members of the Lafayette College Rockwell Integrated Sciences Center design team from our architecture, landscape architecture and building science departments to learn more about the design process.
