Ross Bar­ney Archi­tects is a Chi­ca­­go-based archi­tec­ture, urban design, and land­scape archi­tec­ture studio.

An unri­valed archi­tect for the peo­ple, Bar­ney exudes design excel­lence, social respon­si­bil­i­ty, and gen­eros­i­ty. Through­out all of her work, she has endeav­ored to make the world a bet­ter place.

2023 AIA Gold Medal Press Release

World’s Most Inno­v­a­tive Com­pa­ny
Fast Com­pa­ny names Ross Bar­ney Archi­tects one of 2022’s Most Inno­v­a­tive Com­pa­nies for ​“ener­giz­ing Rogers, Arkansas, with a new park project and McDonald’s restau­rants with a net-zero design”. 

2021 Coop­er Hewitt Nation­al Design Award
Ross Bar­ney Archi­tects Receives Coop­er Hewitt’s Nation­al Design Award. The hon­or acknowl­edges the studio’s forty-year com­mit­ment to design excel­lence, com­mu­ni­ty, and the envi­ron­ment.

Read more about the honor.

“What if… we design dif­fer­ent modes of trans­porta­tion in a sus­tain­able and equi­table way?”

Carol Ross Barney, FAIA, Hon. ASLA

Design Prin­ci­pal and Founder, Car­ol Ross Bar­ney, spoke at Archi­tec­tur­al Record’s 2022 Inno­va­tion Con­fer­ence. Her talk, titled ​“Archi­tec­ture and Infra­struc­ture: Design­ing the Spaces In Between”, focused on mak­ing liv­able and sus­tain­able cities with inno­v­a­tive infra­struc­ture. Although tran­sit, util­i­ties, and pub­lic ways are not gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered to be places for archi­tec­tur­al or design inter­ven­tions, they are impor­tant oppor­tu­ni­ties that we can­not afford to overlook. 

The Chica­go River­walk’s ​“suc­cess has been instant and elec­tri­fy­ing. Gen­uine new pub­lic space, owned by the city and free to use is some­thing we rarely see… The end result is com­plex, urbane, and intriguing.” 

Edwin Heathcote, Financial Times

DuS­able Park design team select­ed
The Chica­go Park Dis­trict select­ed Ross Bar­ney Archi­tects’ joint ven­ture with Brook Archi­tec­ture (DuS­able Park Design Alliance) to design DuS­able Park; a 3.5 acre space where the Chica­go Riv­er and Lake Michi­gan meet.

Hel­lo New York!
Ross Bar­ney Archi­tects begins work on new net-zero ener­gy senior/​com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter for the Town of East Hamp­ton in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Ron­nette Riley Archi­tect (RRA).

Addi­tion­al­ly, The New York City Depart­ment of Design and Con­struc­tion (DDC) select­ed the stu­dio’s joint ven­ture with RRA under the lat­est round of the DDC’s Project Excel­lence Pro­gram (pre­vi­ous­ly known as Design and Con­struc­tion Excellence). 

From the Archive
Com­plet­ed in 2005, the Okla­homa City Fed­er­al Build­ing became the first fed­er­al build­ing to be designed by a Women Archi­tect. The project is a philo­soph­i­cal and prac­ti­cal response to tragedy, mak­ing a state­ment on the role archi­tec­ture plays in pro­tect­ing and inspir­ing society. 

Pulitzer Prize win­ning archi­tec­ture crit­ic Paul Gold­berg­er described the build­ing as “.…a pub­lic space… The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is not inter­est­ed in bar­ri­cading itself in a bunker, but in fact, makes a state­ment to the pub­lic that they own this build­ing, which is what pub­lic archi­tec­ture should be.”

Decar­boniza­tion Award
AIA Chica­go hon­ors the McDon­ald’s Glob­al Flag­ship at Walt Dis­ney World with it’s inau­gur­al Decar­boniza­tion Award, Cita­tion of Merit.

Fast Com­pa­ny World Chang­ing Ideas
Fast Com­pa­ny names the McDon­ald’s Glob­al Flag­ship at Walt Dis­ney World a 2021 World Chang­ing Idea finalist.

Envi­ron­men­tal Stew­ard­ship
McDon­ald’s Glob­al Flag­ship Chica­go receives LEED Plat­inum Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, the high­est lev­el of achieve­ment from the glob­al­ly rec­og­nized program.

Mate­r­i­al Inno­va­tion
McDonald’s Glob­al Flag­ship Chica­go becomes first com­mer­cial use of Cross Lam­i­nat­ed Tim­ber (CLT) in the city.

Jus­tice
Ross Bar­ney Archi­tects is ded­i­cat­ed to empow­er­ing a sense of place, pride, and belong­ing; in our work and in our studio.

Envi­ron­men­tal Stew­ard­ship
Ross Bar­ney Archi­tects designs to pre­serve the plan­et for future gen­er­a­tions and is a sig­na­to­ry of the AIA 2030 Com­mit­ment and Archi­tects Advo­cate. No mat­ter the scope or scale, each of the stu­dio’s projects explore an inven­tive and inte­grat­ed approach to stew­ard­ship; any­thing less is not an option. 

Rai­l­yard Park Sig­ni­fies a Small-Town Renais­sance
Addie Broyles of Metrop­o­lis Mag­a­zine cat­a­logs the recent com­ple­tion of the Rai­l­yard Park in Rogers, Arkansas.

Just the Tick­et; New Rail­side Pub­lic Park
Matt Hick­man of The Archi­tec­t’s News­pa­per reflects on chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties and active train tracks pre­sent­ed for the Rai­l­yard Park “…a local trade­mark worth ven­er­at­ing, not obscuring.”

Inno­va­tion by Design
Fast Com­pa­ny hon­ors the Rai­l­yard Park with a top hon­or for Best Urban Design.