Bohlin’s work first came to national attention in 1975 when Forest House, a summer house for his parents in West Cornwall, Connecticut, appeared on the cover of The New York Times Magazine. An early National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects came in 1984 when the Shelly Ridge Girl Scout Center was recognized for its solar design strategies. The Shelly Ridge project was also the recipient of a grant for Commercial Passive Solar Demonstration from the United States Department of Energy. Subsequent projects like the firm’s work at Fallingwater, Frick Environmental Center, the Ballard Library, and the Pocono Environmental Education Center, evidence Bohlin’s continued fascination with and commitment to resiliency and sustainability.

Bohlin’s contributions to college and university campuses stretch across the United States and have consistently aimed to give dignity to preexisting structures while integrating modernist design, humane experience and the latest technical facilities. In 1989, Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute in Pittsburgh became Bohlin’s first urban project to receive wide recognition. Writing for Architectural Record James Russell called it the “soft machine” writing “…respectful of both place and program; there is a kind of architectural hum as aspects of its heterogeneous neighbors resonate throughout.”