Adam Shalleck, FAIA
Principal, President
What's Missing from his Business Card:
The Diplomat
Super Power:
Knowing when to listen, when to speak, when to ask questions, and when to offer advice
About
It’s official and there is no denying it: the grey hair is setting in. With nearly 30 years in theatre consulting, it’s probably about time. Adam’s career took a frighteningly direct path to the profession by way of connecting his interests and education in architecture and technical theatre. Armed with a B. Arch. from VA Tech and a license in architecture earned along the way, he spent his first 15 formative years with the theatre consultancy now called Auerbach Pollock Friedlander where he was equally steeped in the conception and design of, and improvements to, theatres and production systems.
Adam founded The Shalleck Collaborative in 2003, and has since worked on nearly 300 projects of all scales and types of performing and media arts. Since his purview and the practice has equal facility in building design consultation and technical systems design in parallel, the aggregate solutions can be conceived as an integrated whole, as opposed to solutions that are additive.
Adam has an insatiable appetite to evolve the firm’s planning and design perspective as the design of cultural spaces evolve. On projects he helps clients define and orchestrate, strategize, program, conceive and evolve design schemes, and remains connected throughout a project as advisor, technical resource, decider and diplomat. He now applies his expertise in theatre design to the planning and design of all types of spaces for assembly including groundbreaking inquiry and solutions for large-format teaching and learning spaces (we don't call them lecture halls anymore).
Adam is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and member of the United States Institute for Theatre Technology and has written for various publications. He serves on the VA Tech School of Architecture + Design and the North American Theatre Engineering and Architecture Conference advisory boards and has lectured at several institutions and conferences, is a certified skipper of sailing vessels up to 50 feet and an avid long-distance cyclist.
