John Ronan Architects

About Us

Founded in 1997, John Ronan Architects is an internationally-recognized design firm based in Chicago and comprised of dedicated design professionals committed to producing architecture of the highest quality, marked by conceptual innovation, exploration of materiality, and a rigorous attention to detail. The firm has a studio culture and its working method is research-based and collaborative. Led by John Ronan, the firm pursues an iterative design methodology to explore and test a wide range of design responses in order to find the appropriate response that feels intuitively correct for each individual situation. Each project is approached as a unique challenge and the firm has gained a reputation for responding to project briefs in unexpected ways. In works ranging in scale from small residential to cultural and institutional to large and complex urban planning projects, there is a searching quality that aims to find the appropriate response that feels intuitively correct for each individual project or situation, based on its client, site, program and context—cultural, historical, economic, social and political.

With projects worldwide, the firm provides a variety of architectural and design services (urban design and planning, landscape design, interior design and graphic design), and promotes an interdisciplinary approach to design that includes the leading consultants in their field as collaborators. To each project the office brings an exploratory attitude to the investigation of space and materiality, and a concern for issues of sustainability and the performance of the building over time, both functionally and environmentally.