Connection: Debut of Physical Education + Montana Festival

If the early months of 2025 have taught me anything, it is that we have a responsibility and the joy of caring for each other in community, and that starts by creating spaces where we can share, grow and lift one another up. I believe that thoughtful design is essential to bridging gaps, fostering community, and enhancing our collective well-being. One way we feel that we can build on this set of values is by hosting in our new studio space, located in the Brewery Blocks in Bozeman.

OSC Bozeman Office, Photo by Kaitlin Green

I hope you’ll save the date for our new conversational series titled Physical Education. This will be a series of events, lectures and conversations that will explore the intersection of design, community, and mind-body resilience. Our inaugural event set for March 27 features Dr. Esther Smith, acclaimed Doctor of Physical Therapy and dear friend. In conversation, Esther will discuss her journey in the field of movement, designing ​Ankle Flex​, her groundbreaking ankle mobility product, and offering insights into the design process and its impact on human movement and wellness.

We are so inspired to host this series, this has been a dream in the making for quite some time. For us, taking up space and the built environment go hand in hand—it’s about feeling empowered, comfortable, and free to exist fully. That’s our approach to design: creating spaces that aren’t just functional but deeply personal, supporting the rituals, routines, and connections that shape daily life.

OSC office and team members, Photo by Kaitlin Green

Welcoming Alex Webber.

I’m grateful each day to have a team that shares this design ethos and an understanding of the deep connection between physical space and its relationship to the individual and collective mental and spiritual space. We’ve grown recently with the addition of Alex Webber as our architectural lead. With deep roots in Bozeman through his work with Miller-Roodell and CLB Architects, Alex brings exceptional expertise in both meticulously detailed custom projects and broad-scale conceptual designs. His collaborative approach and technical mastery have already expanded our project capabilities, allowing us to take on more ambitious and diverse architectural challenges.

Mark your Calendar: May 15

We all know digital distraction is dominating our connective experiences and is becoming one of the biggest design challenges facing humanity. The future of architecture can influence how we prioritize human connection based on thoughtfully designed physical spaces where we can live, work, create and play. We will build on this theme and the creative process during the second-ever ​Montana Festival​ on May 15, where I’ll be collaborating with Jason Wickens, of​ Live from the Divide​ (best music venue ever!) for a special event celebrating Bozeman's makers and doers. More to come on this.

To prioritizing connection,

Allison Bryan + the OSC Team

2025 : The Year of Focus.

Hi there –

Happy New Year! As we celebrate what’s possible in 2025, we continue to reflect on our intentions and goals. We like to choose a word for each new year, and this year, the word is “focus.”

To OSC, focus means:

• Our time, and how we spend it, reflects our values. We make time for what matters, personally and professionally.

• Quality over quantity, particularly when it comes to matters of design, and the clients and partners we work with.

• Showing up fully for our clients, the team, and the studio we are building.

• Celebrating our achievements.

Regarding that last one, the OSC team has been reflecting on what we have accomplished this year with the support of many. Perhaps good things come in fives, because we designed five new single family homes and five single family renovations this year. On the commercial side, we also hit that magic number five, working on projects that included a music venue and the workspace of a major brand. Additionally, we designed three large-scale mixed use buildings and four brand identity projects, including a couple that included packaging and brand experiences. We worked in four different states and six cities, all while opening a flagship office in my adopted hometown of Bozeman, Montana.

Office kitchen backsplash at OSC, featuring Nothing Twice mugs by Georgia Barnett. Photo by Blair Speed.

An award-winning backsplash we designed was ​featured​ in The New York Times.

In December, we documented a number of exciting projects. I’m grateful to Bozeman’s ​Blair Speed​ for shooting our office, co-located with the women-owned gallery ​Echo Arts​. We also hosted ​Kaitlin Green​ from Portland to shoot several local projects to be published soon, as well as updating our team photos. More to come as we launch our rebrand later this year.

Copper backsplash at the Lowell Court Remodel in Portland, OR. Photo by Kaitlin Green.

All of our hard work earned recognition in some of the top publications in our industry, including ​Dwell​ last October, a feature Q&A in ​Archinect​, and most recently over the holidays, an interview with ​The Fix column in the New York Times​. The New York Times article advises homeowners on how to select a backsplash that can be the star of your kitchen, and featured one of our past projects from Portland, OR.

A renewed and energized focus on our design efforts will help us nurture the human experience in 2025. We look forward to each of you being part of our journey, and I hope to see you on the slopes this season.

To an intentional year ahead,

Allison Bryan & the OSC Team

Archinect Feature + Autumn Reflections

Hi there.

We’ve already had our first couple of snowfalls in Bozeman, and even though it feels like I’ve spent more days outside of my hometown than in it, I’m grateful for the changing seasons and the moments of reflection I’ve had personally and professionally this month.

There’s nothing like cold season, particularly for those of us with school-age children or who are on airplanes often, to inspire a doubling down on our health and wellness routines.

I am always thinking about the power of place and design to make us feel well inside.

One of my favorite projects was the award-winning Knot Springs in Portland, and I’m always excited to check out the latest wellness centers close to home or on the road. This month, I’ve taken in the views at Sage Lodge in Paradise Valley and cold plunged at Boise’s Studio Lotus. Yet, I don’t think we need to be at a luxury spa to experience greater health and wellness in our homes and workplaces.

I’ll be iterating on this vision with a female founder and CEO we look up to, Gwyneth Paltrow, at goop Health in L.A. on November 16. If you’re going, let me know as I’d love to connect.

We continue to see our hard work rewarded in the media and helping lead our discipline into a more equitable era. I was pleased that Archinect featured OSC in its Studio Snapshot series. In a long-form interview, I shared my thoughts on the importance of establishing an open-minded approach to business, what it means to build success as a female business owner in a male-dominated field, and we we are looking for in new hires as we grow our Bozeman, MT and Ojai, CA based team.

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To designing a beautiful future,

Allison Bryan and the OSC Team

Feature: OSC in Dwell

Having a deeply personal project featured in Dwell two weeks ago was a proud moment.

Our 1967 split-level home near city-center Bozeman in the New Hyalite View neighborhood was featured in the online magazine as an example of what’s possible when an architect focuses their powers on a place that’s most personal: her family home.

As I told the writer, Brian Libby: "OSC has a vibe, but we’re very sensitive to what the client wants. It's a collaboration. But this was very unequivocally coming from my gut, which was super fun…I had just been sitting on ideas and inspirations I've been wanting to do for a long time."

I’m proud of the home I share with my daughter, Ada, 11, in part because we were able to do what everyone says is impossible in a housing market like Bozeman, Montana. Again, as I told Dwell: “The completed home and its interiors are a study in curvy forms and fine-grained material craftsmanship, all on a deceptively modest budget of $111 per square foot.”

The project was the first for which OSC’s sister company, OSC Construction, served as general contractor. The experience has informed our approach to several other projects on the boards, one of which we will be photographing this fall.

Montana’s AIA chapter is gearing up for a conference to be attended by several of our Bozeman-based team members. You can register here. Sadly, I’ll be out of town, but I’m excited that one of my graduate school buddies, Kaarin Knudson – now the mayor-elect of Eugene, OR – will be a keynote speaker, alongside my dear friend Chris Brown of Observation Studio, whose work I admire very much.
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Mayor Kaarin has co-written a staple for those of us committed to building greener communities through sustainable design. Her co-author, Nico Larco, is a professor at U of O, where he and I co-taught graduate studios after I graduated in 2007. You can learn more about The Handbook on Sustainable Urban Design here and pick up a copy of your own.

Speaking of art-forward, sustainable design, our office is co-located with Echo Arts, a women-owned gallery. They have a new show up that you won’t want to miss if you’re in Bozeman this month featuring the work of Sandra del Pogetto. We’re big fans of this Helena-based landscape painter of the American West whose art embodies a “visceral convergence with the natural world.” We’ve staged Sandra’s art in several projects and sourced it for past clients.

Our little Northside neighborhood in Bozeman continues to draw vibrant businesses and now residences with the Wildlands project. We have two new tenants we would like to welcome in our little community, Biome Slow Craft and Beringia – check them both out. We hope you’ll stop by and say hello next time you’re in the area!

To designing a beautiful future,

Allison Bryan

Founder + Owner, OSC

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P.S. - Big thanks to Full Swing Public Relations for assistance with our Dwell story. If you’re in the market for PR, check them out! Founder Caitlin Copple will be in Bozeman for a Sky Oro event 9/25.

June Happenings: New Office + the Future of Urban Spaces

As a fast-growing, woman-owned architecture and design collective, we’re excited to share with you what has kept us inspired, motivated, and busy over the past couple of months.

Many of you were among the more than 300 people who helped celebrate our grand opening of our new office space, located at The Wildlands, 615 E. Peach Street, Suite C. Our Bozeman office is co-located with our friends at Echo Arts, a women-owned contemporary art space that frequently collaborates with us on residential and commercial projects. Pop in and say hello next time you’re in town.

We do more than architecture and design.

We also offer general contracting services through OSC Construction, one of very few woman-owned construction firms in Montana. We’ve recently completed two design-build projects, which you can see on our website, the Bozeman Split Level, and the nearly completed Bozeman Mid-Century residence.

The buzz we’re building about good design here in Montana and beyond contributed to the Montana Festival inviting us to facilitate a panel on the future of urban spaces featuring Bozeman Mayor Terry Cunningham and Festival Founder Padden Guy Murphy, among others. The goal of the interactive workshop, held in early June, was to create the roadmap, rituals, and tools for community engagement and communication between the City of Bozeman and its residents. Together, we can co-create and co-design the future of our community.

There’s no better work than that, and we’re happy to be a part of it.

To designing a beautiful future,

Allison Bryan + OSC Team​