What We Do

Creative urgency in Commercial design informs our processes for Civic development. Civic performance standards bring sustainable values to our Commercial design.

We love mixed-use and multi-use building architecture and urban design projects; our business was founded on them. We’ve worked with developers, homeowners, restaurateurs, and office managers. We promote mixed-use development and urban sites. We love small businesses, we want hard projects, and we enjoy inventing long stories. Our relationships are vital to our process. We actively support our clients as they work through each phase of the work, from the optimism of the first vision and the sweat of the process, through the struggle of construction, and finally bursting into a realization of new environments for living, working, and re-creating.

We know all the empty parking lots in downtown Raleigh. When we see pavement, we see an opportunity for community. Mixed-use design in the city is sustainable. It connects density with transit and to the infrastructure of the city, from public water systems to the latest broadband data providers. Mixed-use architecture is about bringing the world economy to you instead of commuting away from town; it’s about living, working, and playing at home.

Designing for urban life also means Interior Design. We designed retail stores and restaurants into historic brick storefronts and warehouses, bringing energy and community to the middle ground between urban centers. While the economy was looking for landmarks and large deals, our clients were looking for new places to set their spark. With our clients, we invented streetscapes in the city and connected places with new places. The interior finishes bring color, light, and sustainable healthy surfaces to what was dark. The interior finishes change empty spaces that were created for machines into vibrant places that are created for communities. From concept through procurement, the Interior Design team at Osterlund Architects is changing spaces and creating new places.

Our team is passionate about serving and creating communities. We design with thoughtfulness, integrity, persistence and, technical excellence. We love urban locations. We love renovations. We’ve proven our community-focused, collaborative design approach works.

We reclaim and revitalize empty spaces, designing toward beauty, through proportion, necessity, color and light. We get excited about the word “historic” and welcome the unique challenges that each project involves. We believe that honing creativity with inspiration from the world of architecture and following the necessary constraints of building codes and construction details are both essential.