approach.

Dirk Denison Architects is a Chicago-based firm recognized internationally for award-winning design that reflects the uniqueness of each client’s needs to live, work, learn and create. DDA crafts a narrative for each of our projects—one that weaves together the idiosyncrasies of the site, program and client. Our process centers around care and consideration, space and design, quality and craft, materiality and landscape. The result elicits surprise, revelation, information, poetry and seduction, while fulfilling the basic human desire to shape one’s surroundings. We offer a full range of programming, site analysis, design, preparation and administration of construction do****ents, and post-construction services, as well as interior furnishing and furniture design.

portfolio.

Our designs for homes, offices, galleries, student housing, and other spaces for living and working respond to the distinctive character of each client and environment on a human level. Our work throughout the U.S. has been recognized by international design publications, including Architect, Architectural Digest, A+U, Elle Décor, Global Architecture, Interior Design, Interior Design Homes, Metropolitan Home, The New York Times Magazine, Progressive Architecture, and the Urban Land Institute Magazine, and has won awards from the American Institute of Architects, AIA Chicago, the Chicago Architectural Club, and IIDA Illinois, along with the Gold Key Award for Excellence in Hospitality Design.

dirk denison.

Dirk Denison, FAIA, is an architect, educator, and dedicated supporter of the arts. He trained at the University of Michigan, Illinois Institute of Technology, and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Denison has been a full-time faculty member at IIT for over thirty years and serves as Director of the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP). His first monograph, Dirk Denison 10 Houses, was published by Actar in December 2018.