Thirty-Five Years of Design:
Building Everything from Shops to Dot-coms


You’ll find that header on the “Company” page about Helicon, on this newest version of Helicon’s website.

Over the years, in between the shops and dot-coms, there have been a bunch of cousins and newcomers. We’ve built houses, furniture showrooms, and doctors’ offices. We’ve converted an abandoned hospital into office space, designed offices for a start-up magazine and a venerable old one that’s been publishing for over a century. We’ve made stage sets for performance artists.

It’s been said that architects are generalists — knowing something about a lot of different things. Each client, each building, each function brings a unique blend of demands. Each has required us to adapt to changing lifestyles and changing materials.

We’ve come to understand the need for that role very well over the years — and its value. Each of the projects shown here required us to learn a lot about people and their specific environments and bring all that forward to the next one.

And the next one, and the next after that.

This version of Helicon’s site, our third since the firm began in 1991, gave us a chance to look back on that process — the one that has made us the adaptive generalists we are in 2016.

While markets and tastes change, one thing does not: the need for efficient design that also inspires.

As we looked back, we saw some projects with impossible deadlines, challenging budgets, and last-minute changes. We saw solutions that were hard-fought and hard-won. We also saw a common thread: the passion of the project’s owners. We were fortunate to have been involved with them. We were fortunate to have contributed to such energy and creativity.

We hope you will spend some time looking at and enjoying these projects along with us… and find design that works, design that delights.

– Eric Gould


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