Markham Smith and Tom Dalia met in 1976 at Tulane University’s School of Architecture in New Orleans, where they discovered a shared vision for the possibilities that architecture offered. They believed then as they do now, that architecture properly placed could be a catalyst for positive, lasting change for communities.

“Successful architecture is part of the fabric of communities. This means factoring people, purpose, time and place into the planning process,” explains Markham Smith, Principal. “It necessitates a holistic approach to design, development, construction and financing. We think that doing this creates projects that can bring entire neighborhoods into a new light.”

EYE FOR THE POSSIBLE : Schooled during the energy crisis of the late 70s, Tom and Markham first worked together on high-profile restoration projects in the richly historic city of New Orleans. Sustainability principles could be viewed as natural outgrowths of such lean times, or as the primeval undergirding for all good design. Whether chicken or egg, these tenets were readily embraced by Tom and Markham, and informed their career-long design sense. They developed a talent for creatively reusing buildings, uncovering the deeper, more honest beauty often hidden in aging structures by years of anachronistic additions, and taking the pulse of a community to determine the most obvious new use for a structure.

COMING TO ATLANTA : During the oil bust of the late 80s, Tom joined Markham and his wife Ellen Hauck and young family in Atlanta, and opened Smith Dalia Architects. Well, really, Smith Dalia Architects was in Markham’s living room, and with toddlers at home it was a trick to preserve the illusion of an actual office. SDA’s first project was rehabbing bathrooms for mental health treatment centers, and the partners were ecstatic - to be working. A year later, another colleague from their years in New Orleans joined them in Atlanta - Daniel Koch, who, like Tom, hailed from Louisiana with a keen eye and sense for preservation and all types of architecture.

TOUCHING A CITY : The adaptive reuse of buildings translated effortlessly to the Atlanta streetscape, where Smith Dalia was one of the first firms to undertake large-scale adaptive use of warehouses. SDA actually helped to formulate a now-familiar Atlanta sight, the warehouse loft residence. Unique projects such as the King Plow Arts Center in 1990 demonstrated that sometimes the right program can successfully remake an entire urban locale. The galleries, theater, restaurants and living spaces at King Plow are now oft-visited Atlanta destinations. In 1996, the nascent Piedmont Park Conservancy relied heavily on SDA’s programming of public spaces and design sense, with Tom designing the Park’s celebrated 12 & 14th Street Gates. From a heavily blighted state, a true icon was returned to Atlanta, restored according to the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties. The stately presence of this Olmstead-designed Park was returned to the jewel it was meant to be.

PURSUING BEAUTY : Around the same time, Dan and Markham worked on the State Botanical Garden Chapel in Athens, GA, on a project that was in every way sustainable for its time period. The challenge: to place a large chapel in the middle of a botanically sensitive forest with minimum impact. A detailed topographical survey was prepared, locating every tree six inches in diameter or greater, as well as several smaller selected specimens. Markham Smith worked closely with the contractor in the field to save every tree possible, and the one oak that was cut was used for the building’s entry posts. Dan Koch did the breathtaking colored drawings for the structure, and local artisans were hired to work wood, glass, metal and stone to fashion some of the richest and most custom interiors of its time. The Botanical Garden Chapel won the 1996 AIA Religious Architecture Design Award.

As projects became more high-profile in the late 1990s, the Firm began to grow up. Larger projects meant larger collaborations as more architects joined the Firm. Along with that, ideas of sustainable design began to formalize. The world was beginning to understand the negative impact that industrialized living and building practices was having on the planet and its inhabitants. As a result, the design and construction industries began to offer earth-friendly products, and designers began to re-think how their decisions were affecting these fragile, interconnected planetary systems.

Smith Dalia Architects continued to reuse buildings, most notably their own offices in the Fourth Ward’s Southern Dairies Building, and completed many award-winning projects such as LaFrance Street Lofts in 2005. Nearly all of SDA’s adaptations have remained continually leased, as they are spaces that people like to inhabit. The architects at SDA began to obtain LEED accreditation, and to become excited about green building.

STORMS : With so many projects, tragedies were inevitable, too, and the catastrophic Fulton Cotton Mill construction fire in 1999 made history as the world witnessed the daring helicopter rescue of a crane operator. The historic mill building was re-built using authentic materials, and the project bounced back to win the 2002 Georgia Trust For Historic Preservation Award for Excellence in Rehabilitation.

GIVING BACK : As an outgrowth of Smith Dalia’s work on mental health and healthcare facilities, affordable housing projects for non-profit agencies began to appear on the boards. As this community-centered culture blossomed at SDA, many affordable housing projects took shape, bringing a more aesthetic face to what were formerly considered, and looked like, institutions. Historic Scottish Rite in Decatur, GA, and its accompanying Independent Communities, which was designed with total-site wheelchair access and attractive Craftsmen-style homes for mobility-challenged residents, won several design awards and transformed a blighted neighborhood into a bustling contemporary community.

GREENING: In 2005 Smith Dalia made a more formal commitment to green building, adding an expert green building consultant to its staff, and offering LEED and other sustainability consulting to its list of services. SDA is performing LEED consultation for the North Carolina Research Center at Kannapolis, NC. This 260-acre+ site is the future home of a tri-university bio-technology research campus. So far, SDA is performing LEED consulting and administration for fifteen buildings on this site alone, with many more to come. Every SDA project now offers clients as many green building options as possible, and hopes to attract more clients who are interested in healthier buildings with less deleterious impact on the planet.

A CLEAR VOICE: In 2006, Smith Dalia affected the future of an entire region by loaning the services of a senior LEED AP Project Manager, its Director of Green Building Initiatives, and its Writer to the Piedmont Park Conservancy to help craft a Kresge Sustainable Planning Grant. The Kresge Foundation subsequently awarded its largest planning grant to date in Atlanta, enabling several professional sustainable design charrettes. These think-tanks are developing sustainable design principles shaping the Park’s entire future, making it truly one of the gems on the “Emerald Necklace of Parks” envisioned for the Atlanta BeltLine.

For the past six years, Markham Smith has expressed his personal commitment to sustainability by taking a leadership role in his own backyard. A stormwater problem existed around City Hall East, and one solution was to create a stormwater detention pond as opposed to increased underground drainage, potentially restoring the historic flow-way of Clear Creek Basin. The idea developed that a pond could be more than a concrete municipal structure, but an amenity in the center of a beautiful park greenspace. Six years and countless meetings later, ground is soon to be broken for Clear Creek Pond, a $30 million stormwater detention project by the Department of Watershed Management. A new park for the Old Fourth Ward now appears on Google Earth, with a nascent Old Fourth Ward Park Conservancy to help support it.

GROWTH: The Firm has grown to mid-size, still enabling the three Principals to maintain direct oversight of every project. Dan Koch actually moved to Mobile, AL for two years to oversee the comprehensive historic restoration of the Battle House Hotel, a landmark of downtown Mobile. He was able to oversee flood remediation in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, going on to complete the award-winning restoration and coordinate the addition of a 40-story hotel and office tower in conjunction with TVSA. (Dan is back in Atlanta now.)

LEGACY: In twenty years there has been much growth and change: personal, as valued people have come and gone, marriages have occurred, children have grown up and are now being born; in the business of architecture; in the astounding changes in building technology; and in our troubled world. But the hearts of the people who are part of Smith Dalia have not altered from their original passion for good design, respect for the earth, ethical standards and essential goodness. The hope is for this to be nurtured and passed on as the Firm begins a second generation in a new century.