Chris sees architecture as an expression of what a community values most, and few values run as consistently through a community as quality education. This conviction drives a constant search for solutions that address the real needs of the community rather than settling for old ideas simply because they worked somewhere else before. Every project, in Chris's view, relies on the particular experiences of the students, teachers, and families that a project serves. A building is so much more than a transaction between students and instructors.  It holds an entire a community, and Chris designs with that scale of impact in mind.

By looking beyond the classroom to the families and caregivers who interact with a school, Chris gives every first impression and small accommodation the same attention as each learning space. A family engagement space can turn a new community member’s first contact with a new school system into a real introduction, and a room built to host before- and after-school programs can give a caregiver on an early or late shift a way to bring care to child outside of standard hours. 

This shapes how Chris approaches the tensions a school project raises, whether updating a building and honoring what a community already loves about it, or asking questions about what makes a new building a true symbol of the community. He looks at each one as a design question with more than one possible answer, and the right answer depends on a specific school's own culture and the ability for the design hold up long after it stops being novel. The result is trust built one project at a time, the kind that comes from a community seeing its own priorities reflected in the finished building.

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