The SLAM Collaborative

The SLAM Collaborative traces its start to 1976, when Russell Stecker and David LaBau merged their practices in Connecticut. Fifty years on, it’s a multidisciplinary design firm based in Glastonbury, Conn., with offices from Boston and Philadelphia to Atlanta, Denver and Los Angeles. Architecture is the core, but SLAM also does structural and civil engineering, landscape architecture, interiors and planning in-house. Justice and higher education are big markets for it, along with K-12, healthcare and sports. In Columbus, Ga., it shared architecture with Barnes Gibson Partners on the $207.5 million John D. Allen Judicial Center, a 342,000-square-foot courts complex that kept the old wings and added an eight-story tower. It opened Oct. 30, 2026.

The unusual thing about this practice is the engineering. Structural and civil engineering sit in house alongside architecture, interior design, landscape architecture and construction services, which means a client can run design and construction administration through one firm rather than assembling a team. Programming and planning, master planning and experiential graphic design round out the list, and there is a laboratory and simulation planning specialism aimed at teaching and research facilities.

Ten offices carry the work: Glastonbury, Boston, Providence, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Orlando, Denver, Colorado Springs, Iowa City and El Segundo in California. The Colorado Springs presence follows a merger with RTA Architects, which the firm announces on its homepage.

Seven markets define the portfolio, and two of them are specialisms most design firms do not carry: justice work, and sports. The rest are corporate, healthcare, higher education, K-12 independent education and K-12 public education, split deliberately because independent and public school clients procure and budget differently.

Two projects show the scale involved. The Thomas A. Fanning Student-Athlete Performance Center at Georgia Tech in Atlanta is a new 100,000 square foot facility. Temple University’s College of Public Health in Philadelphia is a 306,000 square foot building, delivered with PZS Architects, and is the kind of project where in-house structural engineering earns its keep.

Fifty years in, the practice is marking the anniversary publicly, and its growth pattern is worth noting for anyone choosing a design partner: it has expanded by merging with established regional firms rather than opening branch offices from scratch, which tends to mean local licensure and local relationships come with the office.

The Glastonbury headquarters is reachable on 860-657-8077, with per-office addresses and directions published for each of the ten locations.