Architectural Collaborative

Lori Bork Newcomer and the entire team at Architectural Collaborative are excellent to work with. Good listeners and communicators, creative, skillful, thoughtful, environmentally conscious. Great eye for design while being mindful of budget, significant knowledge of construction techniques and materials as well as building codes.

This is the first home we have chosen to architect from a blank sheet of paper. We found Lori Bork Newcomer simply by researching local architects, and reading published articles. We knew from our first in-person meeting that Lori (Arcollab) would perfect for our project. We were drawn to Lori's blend of contemporary & industrial design styles, and were convinced after speaking with her very satisfied clients. Lori did a great job of honing in on our vision of our future "dream" retirement home. Lori is currently working closely with our Builder to stay true to the design plan and hold to the budget as best possible. Together, they make a great team. We are beyond thrilled at this point! Our home should be finished in May 2019. The project cost below is for Arcollab architectural services only and does not include the cost of construction (home build)

We hired Gabe from Arcollab to design a minimalist, German-style house for our 10-acres of land outside of Athens. My husband and I aren’t the easiest customers (very high standards), but from day one, Gabe blew us away with his creativity, perfectionism, work ethic, and professionalism. We are honored to have had the opportunity to work with the wonderful folks at Arcollab.

We hired Lori Bork, PA of Architectural Collaborative, to design our new home. We admired her work and commitment to green building and are extremely pleased with the experience of working with Lori and her team. Our site is beautiful and challenging. We had many specific requests for a home where we can age in place, enjoy the views of trees and the river with space for each of us to work, room for our grown children, lots of outdoor spaces, and a design that creates open spaces and lots of light. Lori took our thoughts, ideas, and Houzz photos and created a house more beautiful than we could have imagined. She helped us create our vision of an environmentally sound home through her design as well as connecting us with a contractor who shares our values. We can't wait to live in our new home and we will always be grateful to Lori for taking our sometimes vague ideas and thoughts and creating a perfect home for us. Merrily Dunn & Gregg Nagle

Very professional and easy to work with. Was able to translate my abstract vision into reality while keeping my feet on the ground and within budget.

We worked with Lori Bork at Bork Design to design an addition for our house, and can't say enough good things about her. She approached our project with enthusiasm, efficiency, patience, and such amazing generosity--even when it became a much bigger project than we originally anticipated. Lori listened to all of our ideas and desires, asked us helpful questions about how we wanted to use our new space, and what we were thinking in terms of budget. She then quickly turned out a few different plans for the project. She impressively balanced our (sometimes crazy :-) ) ideas with what would realistically work in terms of design and budget. We felt that Lori was there for us whenever we had questions or concerns. She helped us hire our contractor (who we also loved!), helped us think through where we could cut down on some cost, came over to help us with layout and detail decisions when we felt a bit stuck, and generally just checked in along the way. When it was time to finalize the layout for the master bathroom renovation we realized we didn't know the best place to put the toilet and we just could not decide. We had to tell the contractor the next day because the plumber was coming to lay line for the toilet. We asked Lori if she could help us, and she came by that afternoon to talk us through the best layout (which we love), and gave us suggestions for a sliding barn door, tile, and glass (which we also love). We trusted her to give us her honest opinion about aesthetic decisions, and the few times our decision didn't completely align with her thoughts she was very supportive. For instance, when choosing exterior colors, Lori suggested that a yellow-green would pair nicely with the charcoal gray we'd already chosen for metal siding. We ultimately picked a more blue-green, and Lori never made us feel like that was a bad choice even though it wasn't her recommendation. She was very respectful of the fact that aesthetics were something we should feel good about because it was our house not anyone else's. When it came to more structural decisions, Lori was great about being upfront, yet gentle, about which of our ideas would work and which ones wouldn't. For example, we originally wanted to put a wood burning stove in our dining room or living room, and after some thought Lori came back to us and said that she just didn't think that would work well because of the complicated roof line necessities and other structural needs. We really appreciated her ability to tell us no as we would much rather have a sound structure to our house than some cool aesthetic. And she didn't just tell us no, but suggested other places where the stove might work better. We live in a wooded area, and Lori's design beautifully blended sleek modern architecture with the surrounding trees, allowing our new house to be connected with nature in a wonderful way. Lori clearly has an eye not just for good architecture design but for design that makes sense for its location. Perhaps our favorite piece of the project is our screened porch, which Lori angled in such a way that we get a refreshing cross breeze and feel like we are in the trees, and where she helped us decide to place our wood burning stove. (It is very hard to pick our favorite part of the project, though...we love all of it so much--the floor to ceiling windows that look out into the woods and help us bring light into the house, the roofline that was a bit complicated, the new master bedroom and walk-in closets, etc.) Overall, we could not have done this project as well without Lori. We would most definitely recommend Bork Design (already have, in fact!). A big thank you to Lori and her team!!

Our interaction with Bork Design, Inc. was an absolute pleasure from start to finish! BDI did an excellent job in helping us identify & clarify our architectural needs & wants for a medium-sized addition to our current home, and then developing a design that to facilitate the accomplishment of our aesthetic, functional & economic objectives. We offer the following terms to further describe BDI: friendly, collaborative, creative, knowledgeable, highly-responsive & conscientious. We HIGHLY recommend BDI.

Lori Bork Designs has made for me, an impossible task a working reality. My husband and I are doing a gut job remodel on a mid century home with no experience or preconceived ideas of how to make this project a livable home. Lori and her staff have held ours hands, given us incredibly innovative and unique visions and solutions to problems we thought insurmountable. . They are professional, fun and a wealth of architectural knowledge.

We used Bork Design for a fairly extensive renovation project. Lori has a great eye and style and she came up with a great design for adding a modern-ish addition on to a 1930s era bungalow. Her solution for us has a high level of design that also solved some of the "daily living" and pragmatic issues we were facing. We have seen her previous work first hand so we know how good the the final outcome will be - which has us really looking forward to the completion of our project! I'm sure we weren't the most difficult clients she has had, but we did make some changes along the way. She was very graceful and accommodating with our requests, which led to some back and forth conversations and sharing of ideas that ultimately got us to a good place where everyone was happy. She is very personable and was a pleasure to work with on our project.

Over the years we had heard such wonderful things about Lori that we just knew she would be perfect to help us plan for the rehabilitation our recently purchased historic home in Athens, Georgia. We wanted to honor the history of the home while also modernizing it. We knew the planning phase of our project would set the tone for the entire project, and the Bork Design team did not disappoint. Not only did Lori help us design the entire scope of the project, but she also helped us outline the final plan so that we could easily request detailed bids from contractors. Having a great plan is just so important, and I can honestly say that we could not have done it without Lori’s assistance. Her team was incredibly responsive and the entire process felt very personalized and tailored to our needs. I have very high standards when it comes to professional services and would have no hesitation in recommending Lori and her team to anyone considering such a project. If we ever do something like this again, Lori will absolutely be the first person we contact!

We are almost finished with our new construction home designed by Bork Design. We could not be more pleased. From the start, Lori gathered the appropriate information to make sure the house reflected our taste and met our needs. Although we had some ideas, she nailed the design better than we could have imagined. Throughout the process, she handled any design questions that arose with an almost immediate response and a schematic that would detail any special features. There were no major design flaws. With our topography map, she positioned the home on the land to make the best use of the space and sun exposure. Her attention to detail, including sight lines and thoughtful additions, makes our home one of a kind. Can you tell, we are kinda in love with our house! Thank you, Bork Design, for sharing in our vision and seeing this dream to reality.

Designed a modern house addition to attach to a house built in 1840 - a challenging project to blend the two structures. Lori has been wonderful - innovative, professional, and flexible with design requests. The building of the structure will begin in 2014.