Résumé

Draftsman, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, Architects (SOM), Los Angeles, CA, c. 1980-1981

Draftsman, Mario Botta, Architect, Ticino, Switzerland, c. 1981-1982.

Founding Partner, Allied Works Architecture, Portland, OR, 1994- . Allied Works Architecture opened a Brooklyn, NY, office in 2003. Between at least 2009 and 2022, the Portland office operated at 1532 SW Morrison Street Portland, Oregon 97205 (tel: 503.227.1737). In 2002, the Brooklyn office stood at 457 Carroll Street Brooklyn, NY 11215 (tel: 212.431.9476).

High School / College

Graduate, Tigard High School, Tigard, OR, c. 1974. In high school, Cloepfil played on the Tigard football teams in 1973 and 1974.

B.Arch., University of Oregon (U of O), Eugene, OR, 1980.

M.Arch., Columbia University, New York, NY, 1985.

Relocation

Cloepfil was born in Portland, OR, and attended high school in Tigard, OR, between c. 1970 and 1974.

He matriculated at the University of Oregon (U of O), Eugene, OR, from 1976-1980. After the U of O, he relocated to Los Angeles, CA, to work in Skidmore, Owings and Merrill's officer there and to Ticino, Switzerland to work for the noted Swiss architect Mario Botta (born 04/01/1943 in Mendrisio, Switzerland).

After work for Botta, Cloepfil returned to the US to attend graduate school in architecture at Columbia University.

Between 1995 and 2002, the architect resided at 1817 NW Aspen Avenue in Portland. He maintained residences in both Brooklyn, NY, and Portland, OR, between at least 2016-2019.

Spouse

He wed Carey L. Critchlow on 06/02/1985 in Alameda County, CA. (See Ancestry.com, Source Information Ancestry.com. California, U.S., Marriage Index, 1960-1985 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2007, accessed 11/09/2022.)

Biographical Notes

A biographical publicity sketch was released by the New York Public Library where Cloepfil and landscape ecologist Eric Sanderson spoke on 05/04/2011; the title of the talk was "Allied Works Architecture: Architect Brad Cloepfil in conversation with landscape ecologist Eric Sanderson." The NYPL bio read as follows: "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.” (See New York Public Library.org, "Architectural Explorations in Books - Brad Cloepfil and Eric Sanderson - Allied Works Architecture," published 2011, accessed 11/09/2022.)

Christopher Hawthorne, architecture critic of the Los Angeles Times, identified Cloepfil as a “2011 Face to Watch in the Arts.”