David M. Schwarz Architects, Inc. is a Washington, D.C. based design firm established in 1976, and incorporated in 1978. The firm began as a five-member architectural practice and currently employs an architectural and administrative staff of forty. Our second office in Fort Worth, Texas opened in 1985. In addition to our Washington and Texas work, we are the designers of cultural, institutional, commercial, sports, educational, mixed use, and residential projects throughout the United States.

We are principally an Architecture and Planning firm. Our design-oriented firm emphasizes architecture as both a service and an art. Much of our early work in historic preservation engendered the firm with an appreciation for the expressive character that can be conveyed by buildings. Over the years, we have developed skill and sensitivity in the use of architectural design features to make buildings engage their users in meaningful dialogue concerning form and function, tradition and innovation, relation to human scale and surroundings, entry and

circulation, proportion, detail and materials, and civic life. Our work strives to create a human scale enriched through an appropriate level of detail and the juxtaposition of a broad palette of ornament and materials.

Appropriateness to context is a fundamental tenet of our design philosophy. We never see our buildings as isolated independent objects, but rather as interactive parts of a larger whole. We design buildings and places for the people who use them; the active users who live, work, study, play or travel through them, and the passive users who may walk or drive by during the course of their daily lives. We strive to craft welcoming, well-proportioned spaces with an appropriate scale and level of detail such that the building responds to and engages directly with the people who use it.