Our values
Our values are the foundation of our design approach. Relationships with clients, consultants, creative collaborators, and public and private entities informs our best work. Ideas born from these relationships lead to innovative approaches for addressing pressing social, economic, ecological and practical challenges. Translating those ideas into thoughtful built solutions — making spaces and things that people can use and benefit from — is the ultimate expression of this process.
How We Show Up in the World
The themes that drive our work also inform the types of projects we take on, the initiatives we pursue, and the research we conduct.
Creative Voice & Cultural Identity: We amplify local art, culture, and community voice through our work. Spaces should reflect the personality of their users and actively nurture the culture that makes each place distinct.
Equitable Community Development: We honor history and cultural significance while meeting contemporary needs and future aspirations. Through inclusive design, participatory planning, and a commitment to environmental justice, we ensure that growth lifts existing communities first.
Intentional & Authentic Design: Collaboration among diverse voices produces solutions that are useful and beautiful — born from discussion, compromise, and collective aspiration. Our designs carry lasting cultural and practical relevance in a world that never stops changing.
Green & Social Infrastructure: We design systems that support wellbeing through resources, culture, and shared values — where universal accessibility, abundant green space, and safe non-motorized options promote healthier, less stressful lives.
Craft & Construction: We believe in architecture's experiential dimensions: natural light, seasonal change, landscape, materials, and detail. Architecture, like music, is an immersive experience. How built form engages its surroundings always fascinates — and always invites innovation.
Sustainability: Through adaptive reuse and creative re-appropriation, we reduce environmental impact, preserve cultural memory, and extend the reach of good design to more people — while keeping unnecessary construction waste out of the landfill.
About us
Hammersley Architecture is a Chicago-based architecture and urban design practice founded in 2008 and led by Brian Hammersley. Working across scales and types — from architecture and planning to interiors — Hammersley Architecture collaborates closely with clients, community members, and expert consultants to realize thoughtful, innovative projects that are as functional as they are beautiful. At the heart of every project is a commitment to connecting people to one another, to their communities, and to the environments they inhabit - whether that is a private residence, outdoor public space, or adaptive-re use of an existing building. This is how we contribute to and make positive change in the larger world community around us through our firm’s work.
Brian Hammersley is the principal and founder of HA, leading the studio's collaborative design process, research, and daily operations. Under his direction, the firm focuses on projects rooted in community development, adaptive reuse, and innovative social infrastructure.
For Brian, architecture is not a fixed outcome but an ongoing act of making. Alongside his design practice, he engages the creative process through travel, art, music, and time spent in nature. Outside the studio, he is an avid multi-discipline cyclist, experimental cook, artist, snowboarder, and house music DJ and producer. These parallel explorations inform how ideas are developed and tested in professional practice.
Teaching is another arena where Brian's curiosity finds a home. He brings the same hands-on sensibility to the classroom — focusing on the experiential qualities of design, how people actually use space, and how buildings come together in detail and construction. He has taught at IIT's School of Architecture, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Graduate School of Architecture, and Triton College, and has served on design review juries at institutions across the country including UIC, UIUC, IIT, University of Chicago, University of Cincinnati, and the University of Texas at Arlington.
With over 30 years of practice, Brian brings deep professional grounding to every project. He is a Registered Architect in Illinois and Wisconsin, an NCARB Certificate holder, and a Self-Certified Architect in the City of Chicago — giving the studio broad reach and standing across the region and the country. He is also an active member of both the Chicago and National chapters of the AIA.
Brian holds a Master of Architecture from the University of Florida and a BS in Architectural Studies from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. At Florida, he studied at the UF Vicenza Institute of Architecture in Italy — spending time traveling throughout Europe and immersing himself in architectural history firsthand. That instinct for curiosity and discovery has never left him. Engaging with the world beyond the studio remains one of his greatest sources of inspiration.