Alliiance

Alliiance is a Minneapolis architecture, interior design and planning practice best known for aviation work. The firm’s portfolio centers on terminal planning and design at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, the Lincoln Airport terminal expansion in Nebraska and Williston Basin International Airport in North Dakota, alongside commercial and institutional projects. Services run from feasibility studies and master planning through construction documentation, construction administration and post-occupancy evaluation, which suits owners running phased work inside operating facilities. Alliiance was named the 2025 AIA Minnesota Firm Award recipient. The firm is design partner on the Terminal Modernization Program at Memphis International Airport, including the new administration and checked baggage inspection system building.

The practice opened in 1970 as The Architectural Alliance and turned 55 in February 2026. Its home is the Bovey mansion near downtown Minneapolis, a historic house the firm has reworked over the decades into studio space at 400 Clifton Avenue. Staff numbered more than 130 professionals in 2025, growth of about 20 percent since 2022, and a Chicago office opened in July 2026 to serve clients and Chicago-area employees. A third location sits inside Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport at 4300 Glumack Drive, which says a good deal about how much of the workload happens on an operating airfield.

Alliiance splits its work into seven studios, each with a named leader: academic, aviation, civic and community, environmental learning, lifestyle, science and technology, and workplace. Mamie Harvey, who became president after a run of leadership transitions, co-leads the science and technology studio. That structure explains a portfolio reaching well past terminals, including the Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis Central Library, the Hennepin County Public Works Facility, Ecolab’s global headquarters, Cargill’s Minneapolis research and development center, and a long run of University of Minnesota buildings such as the John T. Tate Hall renovation and addition, the Bee and Pollinator Research Laboratory, the Physics and Nanotechnology Building and Huntington Bank Stadium.

The aviation client list extends past MSP to Spokane International, the Concourse E redevelopment at Milwaukee Mitchell International, Louisville Muhammad Ali International, Clinton National, Barkley Regional, Quad Cities International, Gerald R. Ford International, Springfield-Branson National and Jose Joaquin de Olmedo International in Guayaquil. Park and interpretive design forms a smaller, distinct strand: Mississippi Gateway Regional Park, delivered with WSB and Split Rock Studios and given a 2026 AIA Minneapolis Merit Award, and the Oxbow Park Nature Center, which took the same merit award in 2025. Job postings put Revit at the center of production with SketchUp, AutoCAD, Enscape, Rhino and Grasshopper alongside it, a practical detail for owners weighing how a design team will hand off models on a phased project.