DIALOG has earned a prestigious international accolade for a project that showcased the practice’s commitment to ambitious and imaginative design.
Business magazine Fast Company has included DIALOG on its 2026 list of the 10 most innovative architecture companies, citing the design of the Peter Lougheed Wildlife Overpass outside Banff, Alberta.
“It’s exciting to see our approach to innovation recognized internationally – it is a big part of our culture – pushing the envelope with creativity and tenacity, looking for new solutions for big world problems,” said Antonio Gómez-Palacio, DIALOG Partner and Chair.
Now in its 18th year, Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies list recognizes organizations across 55 categories whose innovations are shaping industry and culture, setting new standards, and defining the future across every sector of the economy.
“All 10 honorees on this year’s architecture list have made societal challenges and systems-scale shortcomings into side projects of their more straightforward architectural design work,” Fast Company wrote in its article announcing the list. “The list is replete with design firms and architecture industry specialists that see the complexity of today’s big issues as a call to action, and they’re using their work as a way of getting more than a building built. Their designs and, by extension, the world will be better as a result.”
The overpass stretches over one of the busiest sections of roadway in Alberta, with up to 30,000 vehicles per day passing by during the peak summer traveling season. Cutting through several migration routes, that segment of highway has long been a hot spot for wildlife-vehicle collisions.
“Wildlife overpasses are nothing new, but DIALOG took a different approach with its design,” according to Fast Company. “By bringing wildlife biologists and ecologists into the early stages of the design process, and involving them throughout the project’s construction, the architects created a wildlife crossing with a physical form and sight lines that better accommodate the lifestyles and migration patterns of the various species known to travel this area.”
