DR
Dana Rombout
Founder, principal designer
Trained as an architect, spent six years framing houses before drawing them, and still keeps a set of chisels in the truck. Draws every project that leaves this office.
Four people and a shop
Rombout has been the same size for six years. It is a deliberate ceiling, not a stage we are passing through on the way to somewhere larger.
White oakBluestoneBlackened cedarBoard-formed concreteStanding-seam zincReclaimed chestnutLime plasterCold-rolled steelSoapstoneCharred larchRift-sawn ashMineral wool
The short version
We stopped growing on purpose
Dana Rombout started this in a rented bay off Cornell Street in 2009, having trained as an architect and then spent six years framing houses for somebody else, which turned out to be the more useful of the two educations.
By 2019 we were running seven projects and the work had started to feel like management rather than building. So we cut back to three at a time and have stayed there since. It means a longer waiting list and a smaller company than the market would happily support, and it also means that the person who drew your house is on site while it goes up.
We work inside a fifty-minute radius of the shop. Not because we are precious about it, but because a superintendent who is on site every morning and a shop that can deliver a stair on a Tuesday afternoon are worth more than a wider map.
16Years building in the valley
84Houses drawn and delivered
1Team, from first sketch to final walk
63 Cornell Street
Drawing office at the front, millwork shop at the back
One building, one door between the two halves, and it stays open. A detail that cannot be built gets found out in the afternoon rather than fourteen months later, which is roughly the entire theory of this company.
Everyone, in full
The whole company
MO
Marcus Oyelaran
Construction director
Twenty-two years in the field, the last eleven here. Runs the schedule, the subcontractors and the budget, and is the person who tells Dana when a detail cannot actually be built.
PR
Priya Raghunathan
Project architect
Handles code, structure and the parts of a set of drawings that nobody thanks you for until year fifteen. Leads the historic and landmark-district work.
ST
Sam Teague
Shop foreman
Runs the millwork shop on Cornell Street. Stairs, cabinetry, doors, windows and every timber frame we have raised since 2016.
Plus eight carpenters, and the same eleven subcontractors we have used for the better part of a decade. Nobody bids against them and nobody has to.
Next step
Tell us about the land.
Every project here started with a walk on someone's site and an honest conversation about what it could carry. Yours can start the same way.