Searl Lamaster Howe

Client and detail-centered architecture and interior design firm. Nationally recognized but still place a top priority on hands-on personal service. We are a custom residential architecture firm at our core but have excelled with clients in the non-residential realm with detailed and distinctive and challenging project requirements. As women-owned business enterprise (with all the civic credentials to offically define us as such), since our founding in 1990, we believe we are distinguished by our collaborative, inclusive approach to design and implementation.

We are committed to realizing inspiring spaces for people who value where they live, work, play, and learn. Intense collaboration at each step of the design and construction process is key to the remarkable diversity and quality of the office’s work. A project’s aesthetic is informed by a detailed study of program, context, technology, and budget. The studio shares a commitment to creativity, innovation, sustainability, detail, and materiality.

The firm portfolio includes commercial, residential, and institutional projects that range from master planning to renovations to restorations to new construction. The office is a certified Female Business Enterprise (FBE) at the state level; it also holds Women Business Enterprise (WBE) status in Chicago, its home base. The firm works nationally and abroad yet prides itself on a hands-on approach to each project.

We listen to your needs and concerns, help translate them into a vision, and then assemble the resources to make that vision a reality. We take your project from initial conception through construction administration and occupancy support. Our work begins and ends with you.