Our Philadelphia-based firm of nearly 100 professionals is growing. We are currently seeking qualified candidates for a diversity of roles, including Architect, Digital Resources Librarian, Environmental Researcher, and Building Performance Specialist. Please see our Employment page for more information about these positions and details on submitting your application.
As a firm, we strive to create an atmosphere of highly imaginative problem solving and idea generation within a collaborative, open office environment in the Northern Liberties neighborhood of Philadelphia. Learn more about KieranTimberlake.
In 2013, Philadelphia's School Reform Commission announced the closure of 23 public schools. As part of an initiative to offer community-focused pro bono architectural services, KieranTimberlake worked with the Community Design Collaborative, a local nonprofit, to address the pressing issue of these newly vacant school buildings in the City of Philadelphia. In an intensive full-day design charrette during the November Design on the Delaware conference, the KieranTimberlake team worked with community members, private and nonprofit developers, city agencies, and local designers to propose both short- and long-term solutions for two of Philadelphia's closed schools.
The overarching purpose of the charrette was to answer the question: How can we create feasible, community-oriented reuse proposals to encourage the redevelopment of buildings that currently have no interested buyers?
We are delighted to announce that the Brockman Hall for Physics at Rice University has won an Institute Honor Award for 2015 from the American Institute of Architects. The award is the design profession's highest recognition of excellence, and this year, 23 recipients were selected from a pool of 500 submissions from across the globe.
Project Description from Architect Magazine
According to [James] Timberlake, Brockman Hall represents “one of the more perfect examples” of his firm's holistic strategy of design. KieranTimberlake “seemed to find inspiration in the overwhelming technical constraints and resonance in the building's important research mission,” Rice's [Barbara] Bryson says, noting that other firms might have been daunted by the building's litany of programmatic demands. “The result is a building that works brilliantly while providing an … elegant home for some of the best physicists in the world.”
This project is a total knockout in every way—from the incredible planning to the spectacular detailing—yet it is extremely simple and very flexible.
Gorgeous ceilings—pipe, conduits, everything is so neatly coordinated! Even the mechanical room is beautiful! The palette of neutral colors is very warm and beautiful.
This is a very tight building in the way it fits the site, but it's very comfortable on all sides. The photos do not do it justice.
KieranTimberlake is proud to announce two new book publications to be released in spring 2015.
Alluvium: Dhaka, Bangladesh, in the Crossroads of Water
Extracts from Seven Years of the Dhaka Design-Research Lab at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake Published by ORO Editions
Imagine the most extreme urban environment on earth—a place three times as dense as Manhattan, enveloped in a constant flow of water, beset by a relentless stream of rural migrants, plagued by annual monsoons, and threatened by climate change. Since 2007, architects Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake have directed a design-research laboratory on Dhaka, capital city of Bangladesh, for graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design. What began as a desire to help a city in need became an immersion in investigating its ebbs and flows, mapping its urban systems, and charting its development via annual visits. The result of this extended study is Alluvium: Dhaka, Bangladesh, in the Crossroads of Water, a cross-genre book that incorporates first-person narrative, documentary photography, and research-based infographics and maps to encourage new readings and perspectives.
In 2014, KieranTimberlake team members worked together with Total Learning Research Institute President Kerry Joels and participants from Gilbane Building Company and Travis Alderson Associates to create a building information model (BIM) of a virtual base on the planet Mars.
The team recently received a National Institute of Building Sciences Member Award for its support of the STEM Initiative for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. The awards ceremony will take place during the Building Innovation 2015 conference in Washington, DC, this week.
The BIM model is a key aspect of the Mars City Operations Challenge, which teaches high school and community college students to act as facility managers responsible for maintaining the virtual base. The Challenge will launch at schools nationwide in fall of 2015.
