Inner Garden
Portland, Oregon
Housing / First Prize
2025
15 projects
Architecture shaped by clarity, care, and context.
Norbert Schlotter Architect is an independent Chicago practice working across architecture, urban space, installations, and objects.
Each project begins with a close reading of place, use, construction, and the ambitions of those involved. Through dialogue and careful study, familiar types and everyday conditions are reconsidered, allowing a distinct architectural idea to emerge. The measure of the work is the experience it makes possible: architecture that is clear but not predictable, playful without spectacle, and useful and adaptable over time.
Every project begins with listening and a close reading of its circumstances—the people involved, the place, program, resources, and constraints. Through research and conversation, we look for the central opportunity: often a familiar type or everyday condition that can be reconsidered in an unexpected way.
Ideas are developed through drawings, models, and visualizations, then tested against experience, use, construction, environmental performance, and cost. Material, detail, and coordination refine the architecture as it moves toward construction, preserving the clarity of the idea from first concept through completion.
Norbert Schlotter, AIA, NCARB, is a German-born architect based in Chicago. He received a Master of Arts in Architecture from the Technical University of Munich and a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from OTH Regensburg. While in school, he worked with Beer Bembé Dellinger in Munich and studied in the United States. He later worked with HENN in Munich and SOM in New York and Chicago. Alongside his independent practice, he serves as Principal Architect and Design Lead at GFT.