Holt & Lachman: our firm

The Principals
Alan Holt and Denis Lachman are design professionals with over 34 years combined experience with municipal agencies and in the private sector. They provide thoughtful, sensitive, and innovative design solutions. With backgrounds as experienced builders, they know contracting from the ground up. Their work is a track-record of success with review boards, regulatory agencies, advocacy groups, and neighborhood organizations. All of this is topped off with a sterling reputation for providing skilled leadership in the complexities of participatory design, planning, and community involvement.

Strategic Alliances
The firm of Holt & Lachman excels in putting together professional teams to compliment its own in-house expertise. Through these strategic alliances, Holt & Lachman offers an extraordinarily broad range of services tailored to the specific needs of each project. Examples include: archeological research; historically sensitive structural analysis; construction administration; economic feasibility studies; computer modeling and 3D design; green/sustainable design; public art.

About Us
Alan Holt, Principal, [ email ] is a registered architect and, from 1998 - 2003, served as the Urban Designer for the City of Portland, Maine. His work for the City involved designing streetscapes, urban parks and plazas, development of design guidelines for housing development, and facilitating community-planning projects for neighborhood revitalization and waterfront redevelopment.

Since 2001 Alan has been an adjunct professor at the Muskie School of Public Service where he teaches on community-participatory planning process. Before coming to Portland Alan was the City of New Bedford, Massachusetts's first Director of Design & Construction.

Alan has focused his career on how the design of the built environment can serve to foster a sense of community, what makes for functional neighborhoods, and how to build consensus by including stakeholders in a participatory design process. [Full resume]
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Denis Lachman, Principal, [ email ] is a registered architect with a unique blend of professional skills that together provide a command of design at the scales of a town, a building and a detail. He in recognized for his multi-disciplinary experience in Architecture, Community Planning and Historic Preservation.

In addition to practicing architecture, from 1994 - 2000, Denis served as a City Planner with the City of Portland, Oregon with specialties in Urban Design and Historic Preservation. Denis has worked with many municipal officials including town managers, town councils, planning boards and historic preservation commissions. He has extensive experience with making public presentations and in working with community stakeholders to find consensus.

When not involved with the firm Denis enjoys family time, outdoor recreation and fiddling. [Full resume]
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Kiya Smith, Administrative Associate, [ email ] is a residential landscape designer who likes to create inhabitable outdoor spaces for humans and wildlife. For the last 10 years she has had a landscape consulting business, in which she combines her expertise in spatial design, site specifications, and planting materials to create a holistic and livable environment.