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Farr Associates

Designing Sustainable Human Environments
Identified by the New York Times as “the most prominent of the city’s growing cadre of ecologically sensitive architects” and by the Chicago Tribune as “a leader in the anti sprawl movement,” Farr Associates is widely regarded as one of the most sustainable planning and architecture firms in the country. Located in the historic Monadnock Building in Chicago’s Loop since its founding in 1990, Farr Associates’ planners and architects work in integrated design teams to create award-winning designs that provide the most client benefit for the least cost.
Our projects cover all scales of planning—site, neighborhood, city and region—and architecture—institutional, commercial and residential—and fall into three interrelated areas:

Sustainable Architecture | Town Planning and Urban Design | Historic Preservation

High-Performance Architecture and Urban Design
Farr Associates is on the cutting edge of high performance architecture and planning. Our cost-effective strategies and technologies create responsive, vibrant urban places, and the high environmental performance of our projects has earned us national recognition. For example, we designed the City of Chicago’s flagship LEED Platinum green building, the first building to receive this superlative rating in the Midwest and only the fifth in the nation. We developed the first form-based code adopted in Illinois to assist implementing the dowtown redevelopment plan we created for the town, and we are leading the effort to develop sustainable guidelines for neighborhoods.

Leaders in the Field
President Doug Farr sets the firm’s strategic direction, Leslie Oberholtzer, Director of Planning, focuses on form-based codes, corridor, neighborhood and station area master planning, and Jonathan Boyer, Director of Architecture, oversees the sustainable architectural studio, which holds the unique distinction of being the first in the world to have designed three LEED-Platinum buildings, with many more having since been completed or underway.



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These practices are also inequitable since they force non-drivers to subsidize parking costs, reduce travel options for non-drivers, and reduce housing affordability.
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