Firm Description
Atelier Mey was founded with a passion for exploring architecture and the simple goal of creating impactful buildings. Our practice focuses on embracing contemporary issues of energy and materiality, craft in construction, context, typology, and the built environment through a holistic design approach. Through an iterative design process, our ambition is to enhance the human experience and improve the environments in which our buildings are constructed. Our work strives to be conscious, generative, and actively engaged with context.
The office embraces a wide variety of projects, scales, types, and programs, including: working environments, institutional, education, industrial, urban infill housing, and residences. Located in Miami, Florida and constructing throughout the Southeast Region and nationally, our work is responsive to place, climate, and culture. Atelier Mey believes architecture can happen anytime, anywhere, and with anyone.
Atelier Mey received the AIA Miami Small Firm of the Year Award in 2022 and Sustainable Architects of the Year, 2021, both demonstrations of our commitment to connecting architecture with the environment in a meaningful and impactful manner.
Atelier Mey is committed to design excellence.
What We Do:
Atelier Mey is a design firm focused on the design and architecture of buildings– yet, we acknowledge the need to expand our services to meet our clients’ and project demands. These services include fabrication, furnishing, environmental design, project scope and servicing, construction, permitting, design assistance, and product certification. Our firm is committed to delivering high-quality architecture from the design phase through construction, which requires the office to be flexible and adaptable.
In combination with practice-based work, the office utilizes pedagogical frameworks and academic research to inform our work;, often through collaboration with the LU_Lab at the University of Miami’s School of Architecture. Through this partnership, we engage with industry leaders and manufacturers to create both speculative and built work. The connection to academics broadens our capacity for an intrinsically sustainable and craft-based approach.
History:
The office, Atelier Mey, was founded in 2018 in Miami, Florida by the firm’s principals, Shawna Meyer, AIA, and Christopher Meyer, AIA, after practicing in award-winning architectural firms in Minneapolis, MN, and Boston, MA. Initial design collaborations were composed of small-built structures and furniture pieces exploring material and fabrication techniques. These early projects focused on the practical aspects of construction while still embracing the creative opportunities in design and evolved quickly into Atelier Mey, an interdisciplinary full-service design firm with over two decades of professional design experience.
Born: Cherry Point, North Carolina
Raised: Military Bases Across the United States
Shawna Meyer, an architect, researcher, and educator, has been recognized for her significant impact in the field of architecture. She is an active member of the Miami Beach Design Review Board and serves as a board member for AIA Miami, actively engaging in the architectural community in South Florida and the greater Southeastern Region. Before establishing Atelier Mey, Shawna held a senior associate position at Kennedy and Violich Architects in Boston, MA, where she led design teams on prominent projects including the Global Flora at Wellesley College, Data Science Center for Rochester University, and Schlesinger Library at Harvard University,.
The overarching trajectory of Shawna’s career has been in pursuit of design excellence through the craft of architecture. As a principal of Atelier Mey, Shawna received a 2021 AIA Honor Award for Sustainable Architects of the Year from Miami AIA and Small Firm of the Year 2022 AIA Miami, Autodesk Residency, and was recognized as a GRIST 50 Fixer. In 2022, Shawna was inducted into the John G. Williams Fellowship at the Fay Jones School of Architecture + Design.
Through her practicing role as a principal of Atelier Mey and her academic role as a lecturer and researcher at the University of Miami School of Architecture Littoral Urbanism Lab [LU_Lab], she explores design as an act of questioning without perceived bias. The work of Atelier Mey is rooted in innovation and design excellence with recognition of local, national, and global awards. Atelier Mey is the author (with Daniel Hemmendinger) of Buoyant Clarity Pamphlet Architecture 36 and is responsible for the design and construction of the first mass timber structure in Miami-Dade County. Recent work shifts a focus to the emerging mass-timber market in the United States, specifically the southeast and Florida.
Born: Wiesbaden, Germany
Raised: The Ozarks of Southern Missouri
Christopher Meyer is a co-founding principal of Atelier Mey, Assistant Professor, and Director of the LU_Lab at the University of Miami School of Architecture. With a background in construction, Christopher brings technical expertise to the design process, focusing on materiality, detailing, and building assemblies. Each project ambitiously seeks to balance an intellectual pursuit of architecture with the practicality of building assemblies, tectonics, and construction.
Atelier Mey’s work has received awards for design and detailing. The office was honored with the 2021 AIA Honor Award for Sustainable Architects of the Year and Small Firm of the Year 2022 by the AIA Miami chapter. Christopher has also had an Autodesk Residency and served as a Visiting Scholar at The Metropolitan School of Design in Toronto, CA. Additionally, he was inducted into the John G. Williams Fellowship at the Fay Jones School of Architecture + Design and is an author in the Pamphlet Architecture Series with “36 Buoyant Clarity.” Published work by Atelier Mey can be found in various publications, such as “WOOD URBANISM: From the Molecular to the Territorial,” “UF Vorkurs VOID,” “MAS Context 33 Vigilantism,” “Architecture MN,” “Arch Record,” “Residential Design Magazine,” and “Material Performance: Fibrous Tectonics & Architectural Morphology.”
Christopher earned his Master of Architecture from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University in Cambridge Massachusetts and his professional degree from the Fay Jones School of Architecture + Design at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
CURRENT AND RECENT TEAM:
Santiago Sipan
Drew Dunphy
Haley Smith, Architect
Ethan Blatt
Madison Seip
Reid Yenor