About

aoa

Residential / Small-scale Institutional / Community

Ashley "Oz" Ozburn first launched AOA in 2012, focusing on residential and small-scale projects that positively impact their place. 

"Placemaking" and "context" are more than buzzwords at AOA—these are the fundamental principles we use to structure each project. At every step in the process, AOA is collaborating with clients to understand how a project fits into its surrounding, how it is a good neighbor to nearby structures, how to be a good steward of its environment and, most importantly, how to enhance its users' daily interactions. By focusing on these essential elements, we ensure that each project is carefully considered and thoughtfully designed to perfectly fit the client’s individual needs, interests and personality. 

Whatever the scale of the project, AOA is interested in exploring and pushing materiality, using the model-making process to more completely understand how things are constructed, and focusing on people-centered solutions.

Oz

Founder / Principal Architect / Furniture Dabbler

A true daughter of Virginia, Oz earned her Bachelors of Science at the one-and-only University of Virginia. She struck out for Raleigh, North Carolina—a small city but robust in architectural community—where she gained considerable experience as Project Architect for two award-winning residential design firms: Frank Harmon Architect and in situ studio. 

Oz left Raleigh to pursue her Master’s of Architecture from Yale University, where she was awarded the David M. Schwarz Travel Grant, allowing her to research the architectural consequences of urban warfare and document cultural forms of post-traumatic reconstruction in Greece, Cyprus, and Beirut. At Yale, she was also awarded the 2012 Residential Architecture Award.

Most recently, Oz was Project Architect for Studio Gang Architects, leading teams on projects including the University of Chicago Campus North Residential Commons and a new, net-zero campus for the Academy of Global Citizenship.

Presently, she is executing projects throughout the country. Having spent much of her life living up and down the East Coast with summers spent in the Midwest, dipping in Lake Michigan and ogling the Chicago skyline, the ability to now design living spaces in the places Oz holds dear is exhilarating.