Kennedy Mann Architecture

About Us

The Chicago-based firm of Kennedy Mann Architecture, established in 2009 by Ben Kennedy, AIA, and Matthew Mann, AIA, fuses interests in innovation and experimentation with a desire to explore cultural complexities relative to the built environment. Their versatile practice includes projects at the local and international level ranging from large-scale commercial and residential commissions to product design. Our approach to each project investigates the collaboration of materiality and space, believing that both are a direct representation of the adaptable nature of our client’s environment. Their design approach is built not on a pre-determined aesthetic or a rigid “signature style”, but on a naturally growing quest for ideas and answers to our client’s design challenges. Never imposed, design solutions evolve from a rigorous inquiry into the particulars of location, program and context. Each project represents the belief that they can transform problem-solving into a built environment. At its most basic, architecture is a response to fundamental human needs in a way of organizing space while meeting practical demands. At its most exalted, architecture can introduce new perspectives and new dynamics, reinvigorating both landscape and cityscape. They strive to synthesize these two goals, to create buildings that perform as well as excite, buildings that uplift the spirit and are memorable.