Quinn Evans

Quinn Evans

Operating at the intersection of stewardship and inclusion, Quinn Evans has a four-decade-long history of redefining preservation as it has restored hundreds of the country’s cherished buildings and sites. While the firm’s deep commitment to this important aspect of the profession is unrivaled, it continues to transform the discipline to address our most pressing modern challenges: climate change and social inequity. Quinn Evans was among the first firms to demonstrate that sustainable design can and must be incorporated into existing and historic buildings, and it continues to advance preservation as a method of social empowerment.

The firm was founded in 1984 by its trailblazing namesakes, Michael Quinn, FAIA, and David Evans, FAIA, whose design philosophy is steeped in the scholarship of technical preservation, creativity, and an eager embrace of adaptive reuse. Much of the firm’s early work was focused on Main Street programs throughout the U.S. through which the founders quickly understood the impact of preservation on the communities they were serving.

Quinn Evans’ reputation for preservation, design excellence, and expertise in the revitalization of significant places quickly swelled, leading to long-term work on national icons such as the Michigan State Capitol and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Nearby, on the National Mall, the firm’s more recent work has shaped a high-performance environment for the celebrated National Air and Space Museum, where each year Gyo Obata’s 1976 masterpiece welcomes millions of visitors. Phase 2 of that project is expected to be completed in 2025.

“As a long-standing and prominent member of the preservation community, Quinn Evans understands the puzzle of preservation as few others do,” wrote Elizabeth McClure Hallas, AIA, 2023 chair of the AIA Historic Resources Committee Advisory Group, in a letter nominating Quinn Evans for the Architecture Firm Award. “They embrace complexity through a collaborative spirit, integrated design, and innovation to consistently deliver excellence. Their role as thought leaders and advocates ripples across the profession with broad impacts and positive change on the built environment, communities, and the profession.”

While well known for how it adroitly interprets history and culture, Quinn Evans has also long been attuned to the environmental benefits of reuse. The firm is guided by the mantra “the greenest building is one that is already built,” and it synergizes preservation and sustainable design to imbue existing buildings with new purpose and a brighter future. The firm’s study of pre-fossil-fuel-era building traditions helped dispel an array of misconceptions about the performance limitations of historic buildings, unveiling their relevance in creating a more sustainable future.

While the merit of restored historic structures—often enduring visions of architectural achievement—is easy to digest, Quinn Evans also pays equal attention to more “ordinary” structures that suffer from neglect and decades of disinvestment. In doing so, the firm has given life to under-valued properties while placing preservation on the front line of economic revitalization.

As the U.S. continues to grapple with the inequity inherent in the country’s colonial European legacy, the firm’s work helps communities catalyze positive change. It has engaged Indigenous peoples from a number of communities to shape a stewardship framework for the protection of sacred sites in Minnesota and has identified and documented a number of fragile Detroit sites that are linked to the struggle for Black civil rights. By connecting fully with the meaning of place and carefully exploring heritage and culture, Quinn Evans has embraced a critical perspective that has had a profound effect on its practice.