About me

I see architecture as a marriage of science and art. In one sense, a house is like a machine. It serves practical human needs and is engineered to respond to physical conditions. In another sense, a house is a work of art. It evokes emotional responses by transforming its surroundings and framing human life in particular ways. I am fascinated by architecture's dual nature and what it implies about human nature: that our physical and emotional needs are intertwined. The choices we make about how to meet our physical needs speak volumes about who we are, what we value, what we desire. Architecture recognizes that our needs and our desires are equally important, equally real.

This view of architecture is the result of my training and experience. Before choosing architecture as my career, I earned a Masters degree in physics. This showed me the beauty as well as the limits of scientific knowledge. I became interested in architecture because it seemed to employ science while embracing a broader view of the world. In 1984, I received my Masters degree in architecture from Yale, where I studied not only with great architects, but also philosophers, historians and artists. Early in my career I worked in a number of well-known design firms in Paris, New York and Los Angeles which exposed me to a wide variety of ideas about architecture. Teaching architectural design and history at several architecture schools stimulated my thinking and forced me to clarify my ideas for my students.

In 1994 my wife Brenda and I started a firm, Scheer & Scheer, Inc. We kept the firm small on purpose so that we could oversee all the work personally. Over the next 20 years we completed hundreds of projects of many kinds: residential, mixed-use and public buildings as well as urban design and planning. In all of our projects, our focus was on the project's site: the physical characteristics and cultural influences that made it, and therefore the project, unique. Our goal was to express what we discovered about the site as it affected the particular activities involved in the project. Our projects aspired to join the past, as embodied in the site, and the future, expressed in its new use.

We closed Scheer & Scheer and I've started a new practice, devoted entirely to designing single-family homes. The service I offer is to help people create a home that is truly, uniquely theirs. This requires a close relationship with my clients and an even closer one between a client and their project. A major part of my role as your architect is to build these relationships, which takes time and care few architects can offer.

A final note- you are probably expecting to find pictures of my past projects on this website. Although there are some, they are not identified. Here's why: even though I have designed many projects, none will remotely resemble yours. As I've said, architecture for me is a product of the client and the site. No two clients or sites are the same. I also believe people place far too much importance on pictures. No picture can convey the experience of being in a place, which is what architecture is about.