Text pages from “The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing,” (Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, 198-218 AH) manuscript with geometrical solutions to two quadratic equations.

The Story

In 2014, Shariq Ali was riffling through names for the firm he was starting. It had to be unique, personal, descriptive, alluring, and it couldn’t include his name. He was building a firm which transcended himself. A firm where the team bought into the mission, organically built the culture, and trusted that strategic decisions were made inclusively and with their interests in mind.

One evening, it occurred to him that Algebra was the perfect name. It began with “A” so anyone looking up engineering firms in Yellow Pages would come across it first, it didn’t include his name, it represented his heritage, and most importantly it epitomizes the work architectural engineers do: Solve problems with unknown variables. The variable may be thermal loads through a façade, power demand factor calculations, or hygrothermal analysis. The variables when designing high performance buildings are endless.

At this time, there was a national conversation around the removal of algebra from grade school curriculum, despite algebra being the gateway to geometry, trigonometry, calculus, linear algebra, Laplace transforms and beyond. The absurdity of this conversation weighed heavily on our founder, as he founded a firm dedicated to solving complex, technical problems.