OPAL Architecture

Located in Belfast, Maine, OPAL is a nationally recognized leader in ecological building design, known for design excellence, technological and material innovation, and an encompassing approach to client-driven sustainable architecture across varied project types. Since the firm’s founding, our core mission is to envision, through design, lasting, ecologically beneficial environments centering our clients goals and values.

Our approach embodies Maine’s culture, its shared legacy of resourcefulness, its sense of place, and its connection to, and dependence on, the native environment and ecology. We are uniquely positioned to pair outstanding performance with nationally recognized design. This commitment has resulted in measurable impact: OPAL is one of only 27 practices out of roughly 70,000 in the United States meeting the AIA’s targets for an 80% reduction in building emissions across our entire annual project portfolio, a benchmark we have achieved for six years running.

Our work has produced numerous milestones, including the first certified Passive Houses in Maine, Connecticut, and Michigan, as well as the first—and still only—certified Passive House laboratory in North America for the University of Chicago. OPAL’s projects have received awards from the American Institute of Architects at the state and regional level, and most recently the AIA National Architecture Award for the College of the Atlantic’s Davis Center for Human Ecology.