Allied Works Architecture / Brad Cloepfil: Occupation comprehensively covers the ideas, processes, and projects of the noted American architect Brad Cloepfil and his company Allied Works Architecture. The book is premised on a series of conversations between Cloepfil and numerous distinguished thinkers and makers that explore the principles, opportunities, and challenges of creative practice. Conversation participants include artists Doug Aitken, Ann Hamilton, and Ben Rubin, landscape designer Douglas Reed, ecologist Eric Sanderson, theologian and philosopher Mark Taylor, and engineer and manufacturer Jan Tichelaar. Among the numerous projects featured are the Seattle Art Museum , the Museum of Arts and Design in New York , the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Clyfford Still Museum , and the National Music Centre of Canada. Architectural historians Kenneth Frampton and Sandy Isenstadt analyze several of Cloepfil’s buildings in detail. Photographs by Victoria Sambunaris examine the environments in which Cloepfil's projects are built. This first-ever monograph, which includes extensive reproductions of drawings and models, presents a unique and in-depth account of Cloepfil’s works and architectural practice.

Allied Works Architecture creates architecture that embodies the aspiration of cities and their civic institutions. In all of their projects they engage the dynamics of change: elevating the role of schools, museums, urban environments, commercial buildings and residences in their communities while creating a civic architecture that catalyzes the development of surrounding neighborhoods. The 40-person practice operates from offices in New York City and Portland, OR. A defining project of Allied Works the design for Wieden+Kennedy’s World Headquarters, the transformation of an historic warehouse in Portland ’s Pearl District that has become a benchmark for adaptive reuse and workplace architecture. Recently completed projects include the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas , Texas , the redesign of 2 Columbus Circle for the Museum of Arts and Design in Manhattan and the renovation and expansion of the University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor , Michigan . The firm has also designed a number of significant private residences in both urban and rural landscapes. Current commissions include the National Music Centre of Canada in Calgary, Alberta, the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, Colorado, a new animation studio for Pixar in Emeryville, California, the Dutchess County Residence and Art Barn, a new arts building for Catlin Gabel School in Portland, Oregon and master planning for the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon and the Caldera Arts Foundation in Central Oregon. 

Brad Cloepfil is the Founding Principal of Allied Works Architecture. He studied architecture at the University of Oregon and went on to earn an advanced degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture. After more than a decade of work and teaching in Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York and Switzerland, Cloepfil founded Allied Works in his native Portland, Oregon in 1994. The New York City office followed in 2003. In addition to leading all aspects of creative work at Allied Works, Cloepfil has held guest professorships and given talks on the work throughout North America and Europe. In 2010 Sandy Isenstadt, an architecture historian and professor, described Cloepfil’s work as aiming “to create oases of legibility, spaces that can look out upon the simultaneous contrasts of the modern world to appreciate them from a place no less complex, but one that unfolds over time, with repeated visits, rather than at the speed of a camera shutter, thereby rewarding continued occupation rather than just dazzling the eye.” Christopher Hawthorne, architecture critic of the Los Angeles Times , identified Cloepfil as a “2011 Face to Watch in the Arts.”

Eric Sanderson is a landscape ecologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society (formerly the New York Zoological Society). He focuses on planning conservation of habitat and wildlife, working with such diverse species and their locales as lions, tigers, bears, jaguars, tapirs, peccaries, American crocodiles, North American bison, and Mongolian gazelle to date. Sanderson has also created what he calls Human Footprint and Last of the Wild, the first ever visual representation of modern humanity's impact on its only planet at less than one square mile resolution. His conservation efforts have been featured in National Geographic Magazine , the New York Times , Der Spiegel and Ranger Rick . He has edited two scientific books and written numerous scientific papers, in addition to his just-published book, Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City. Sanderson received his Ph.D. in ecology from the University of California, Davis. He also holds a Bachelors of Arts and Science in English literature and Biochemistry from Davis. He joined the Wildlife Conservation Society in 2000 and is currently Associate Director in the Living Landscapes Program.

Initiated and organized by Arezoo Moseni, Architectural Explorations in Books is a new series of engaging programs delving into the critical role that architecture books play in the understanding of contemporary urban developments and structures. The events feature book presentations and discussions by acclaimed architects, critics, curators, designers, photographers and writers.