Our Firm
What is our backstory?
Chernoff Thompson Architects North is a diverse architectural firm in Prince George, British Columbia. As the leading architectural firm in Northern BC, we work on wide-ranging projects, including health care facilities, universities and colleges, commercial builds and renovations, and government buildings. The firm is working towards LEED certified and Passivehouse design principles to provide sustainable designs to the north. Architects North is partnered with Chernoff Thompson Architects in Vancouver and comes from a rich 60-year history within Prince George and surrounding area. We work hard to contribute to Canadian architecture to build a better Prince George for the future.
Our Home
Why did we choose to make our home in Prince George?
Our firm comes from a rich history in Prince George, which we aim to build upon for a better future. Our current partners and architectural team chose Prince George because of the lifestyle, with access to endless outdoor activities, natural landscapes and backcountry to explore. We enjoy being a small firm with intimate relationships with our design team and our clients. Our team is committed to improving the quality of life for Northern British Columbians through great design – living, working and volunteering in the Prince George community reinforces that commitment. Designing for the City and region that we call home fosters an understanding of the identity of Prince George and Northern BC, meaning that our design solutions reflect the history, people, place, climate, and culture. By providing local responses to design problems we can avoid the ‘placelessness’ that is common in contemporary architecture, where similar design solutions are applied across the world with very little understanding of the local context.
Downtown Investment
Why did we choose to locate our office in downtown?
We believe that investment of time and energy in the downtown core will lead to great things. The downtown area has a lot to offer to build upon the energy and vitality of Prince George and we hope that our projects and design interventions in the downtown will lead to a healthy and vibrant city. Our investment in the downtown to be a desirable and equitable social environment means that we endeavor to improve downtown conditions for all people, and face challenges that the downtown has yet to overcome. Our profession has the ability to directly impact the vitality of the downtown, and we believe that an empathetic and responsive approach to design will help to produce solutions to the underlying causes of our social issues in urban areas. We are looking forward to working directly with the City, Council and clients to identify opportunities vital to uplifting Prince George’s downtown to a socially sustainable future.
Our Clients
What is the best part about designing buildings?
Working one on one with our clients is the most valuable experience in the design of new buildings. We thrive on the relationships that we build within our community. Over 80% or our work is repeated or referred business from existing clients, confirming our high level of client satisfaction. From the foundation of our client relationships, architecture is our passion. The design of the built environment is exciting because of the challenge, breadth and depth of knowledge required.
Client Partnerships
How important are relationships in our success?
As previously stated, 80% of our business comes from repeat clients or client recommendations. Every member of our team is a part of the community, as we call Prince George home. We are invested in the future of Prince George and by building relationships and partnerships in the community we can better understand the challenges and opportunities to serve the community better. We are also fortunate to have tremendous talent in Prince George in the engineering disciplines. Whenever possible, we build a team of local consulting engineers for our projects in order to streamline collaboration and provide a better level of service to our clients.
Advantages of a Small Firm
It is easy to overlook a small firm when looking for a capable team for your project, as we compete directly with Vancouver firms for work in Prince George. There are several lesser known advantages to our small firm:
We don’t have huge travel costs for site visits, we can assist our clients directly, and we can manage the construction process locally if a problem should arise. The local advantage can save the client money and time on projects when we are available right away to deploy our problem-solving expertise directly on site. Our clients also know every member of the team working on their project, which ensures accountability and effective communication between clients and project phases.
In addition to offering a considerable amount of architectural experience with our senior team members and principals, we also work very hard to ensure our team has the latest skills. We have recent architecture graduates on our team with the latest education and abilities. The industry in larger city centres is shifting to areas of architectural research in parametric design, robotics, 3d printing and Building Information Modeling (BIM). We are proud to be able provide access to these skills locally with our in-house team. We are applying this advanced software in our office which enables us to create promotional animations and renderings for our clients, as well as real time data about the buildings we design in terms of energy efficiency and building costs. We ensure our client services are just as sophisticated as our Vancouver competitors, as it allows us to provide better services to our clients as well as improving collaboration with our consultants. Sustainable strategies rely on receiving data feedback from our design interventions.
We offer services in a wide-range of project types, from large-scale new construction projects to small renovations. Regardless of the size and budget, we aim to offer the same quality of service to all projects, large or small. We feel that great design should be accessible to all people, not just new buildings with large budgets.
On very large projects, our small size can be extended to our partner firm in Vancouver. This provides the best of both worlds to our clients, as we can provide high quality local client relationships and on-site construction administration, as well as a powerhouse team to create large drawing sets and accommodate tight timelines.
We are an award winning local architectural practice.
We are excited to connect with others invested in Prince George to work toward a
socially, environmentally and economically sustainable future!