FIRM PROFILE

Recognizing in each other both kindred spirit and complementary skill sets, Scott Erdy and David McHenry joined forces in 1999 to work together on the Southern Poverty Law Center. With great business acumen, they were able to leverage their previous experience at a larger firm to make a “lateral transition” into projects of a scale and complexity not always possible for a start-up architectural firm.  Their first project as a partnership garnered them a Philadelphia AIA Gold Medal and the cover of the September 2001 Architecture Magazine.

Since their critically successful beginning, Erdy McHenry has won numerous awards for their innovative work, including the cover of Architectural Record Magazine in July of 2013.  As befits their complimentary skills sets, they have been able to create many fully realized buildings for diverse client types; developers and socially conscious non-profit organizations.  They use a unique business model and Design Philosophy: Integrated Decision Making as a Design Tool, where Budget, Program and Schedule are reconciled each in terms of the other with each design decision.  This approach enables them to create a “value proposition” on all projects regardless of budget and still produce cutting edge work.

All Erdy McHenry projects embrace construction technology, systems integration design, and material cost as the primary methods for creating critical design projects. By using in-depth, digital synthesis to coordinate the process of both design and construction, their designs evolve real-time as a result of systems design.

Educated in the modernist tradition, Scott & Dave are creating an economical, digitally driven method of construction which embraces the purity of material tectonics while revealing the aesthetic of space.  They believe materials (structural, mechanical and otherwise) should be considered finish materials that are integral to the design and are not to be hidden under layers of costly and unnecessary materials.

Leadership