Reimagining the architecture industry

Over the past decade, Equip Studio has been designing more than the country’s most thoughtful places of worship — they’ve also been redesigning what’s possible in the architecture industry.

The company has been named one of the country’s best small workplaces, they’re a destination employer for young architects, and they’ve already grown out of multiple office spaces for their team. None of this is by accident.

From year one (2014), Equip’s four founding partners chose to reject the “pay your dues” burnout culture that the architecture industry is famous for. Instead, they reimagined what was possible in the architecture industry, naming its brokennesses and designing their business in the direction of human flourishing.

They asked questions like:

• What if young architects felt honored and mentored, instead of minimized and over-worked?

• What if life outside work was just as important as what happens at the office?

• What if everyone — not just partners — enjoyed access to career paths and clear ways of improving their value?

Equip has been an ALIGN client from their first year on. Over the years, we’ve worked together to:

• Discover and share the Equip Identity

• Define an aspirational culture and ways to cultivate it

• Design challenging parts of the work process

• Navigate tough decisions that arose along the way

• Train groups of future leaders to become “Rehumanizing Leaders”