We are overjoyed to announce that The Narrow Gate has merged with Joy Street Design to form a new Architecture and Interior Design firm, Joy Squared Design. By combining our two mission-driven firms and talented staff, we are expanding our impact within the communities where we work. With our combined technical resources, experience, and a shared commitment to practicing “Architecture for the Common Good,” Joy Squared is ready to meet the growing demand for our services with the same level of personal attention and design excellence our clients have come to depend on.

Kitty Ryan, Neal Mongold, and Robert Wegener join Sharon Gentges and Trea LaRaia of Joy Street Design to form the leadership team of Joy Squared, a Massachusetts-certified Women Business Enterprise. We can’t wait to introduce you to our new partners and share what it means to practice joyfully.

Our new website is coming soon, at www.joysquared.design

The Yawkey Foundation announced in December that it will be donating $15 Million to Pine Street Inn, a long time client of The Narrow Gate. This money will fund a number of projects going forward, including a current project in design at TNG, making improvements to the historic building housing the Women’s Inn, which will be renamed in honor of this grant as The Yawkey House

This grant follows news from November of a $2 Million grant to Father Bill’s & MainSpring, toward construction of the Yawkey Housing Resources Center, designed by TNG, which recently had its ground-breaking.

Both of these grants will make a huge difference in enabling these important organizations to continue their work fighting homelessness, and TNG is honored to be a part of this process.

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The Narrow Gate and Coppersmith Village are featured in a photo exhibition by Lauren Owens Lambert about the impacts of climate change on Boston's waterfronts, and the people working with these changes.

Follow the link for a fascinating multimedia exhibit and interviews with a variety of individuals working with climate change, including transit operators, food service workers, museum curators, engineers, builders, and an architect - our own David Flaschenriem.

There is also a physical exhibit split between the waterfront parks of Langdon Park in the North End and LoPresti Park in East Boston.

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Last week, Abby’s House received the 2020 Paul & Niki Tsongas Award from Preservation Massachusetts. The project is a renovation of a historic 1924 masonry building, home to 56 units of permanent supportive housing for low-income and formerly homeless women and survivors of domestic violence, as well as offices and program space dedicated to support and advocacy services.

Preservation Massachusetts put together a wonderful video about the project including some great before & after shots, as well as interviews with Stephanie Page (Director of Abby’s House), Maura Tsongas (Development consultant, Stone Soup Collaborative), Andrea Daskalakis (Massachusetts Housing Investment Corporation), and our own Kitty Ryan!

“The Tsongas Award is Preservation Massachusetts' highest honor, honoring people and projects that have displayed the highest level of commitment to historic preservation in the Commonwealth.” - Preservation Massachusetts

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This week, The Narrow Gate was featured on the University of Notre Dame's new website, "We Are ND", which highlights alumni accomplishments.

The article profiles the firm’s history through present day, beginning over 30 years ago. It highlights some of our biggest moments, as well as Bob, Kitty, and Neal’s original motives for starting their own firm dedicated to designing for underserved populations.

"When Kitty Ryan ’79, Bob Wegener ’80, and Neal Mongold ’80 were architecture students at Notre Dame, they knew each other as merely friendly acquaintances. But when they each moved to Boston after graduation, they kept running into each other — almost like they couldn’t avoid each other.

Ryan and Wegener were coworkers at one architecture firm, and a few years later, Mongold was their boss at a neighborhood community development corporation where they all worked together on affordable housing units. Once, they realized that all three of them had applied for the same job designing affordable housing.

And they kept crossing paths in their social lives, too: at The Paulist Center Catholic Church that they all attended, in a weekly faith and social justice discussion group in the city, and volunteering in the soup kitchen at Boston’s Catholic Worker House."

Read the rest on Notre Dame’s website: