Chad Novak

Designing significant buildings isn’t enough for Chad Novak: architecture should partner with its place and respond to the natural environment. He brings thoughtful, inventive, and collaborative design solutions to primary, secondary, and post-secondary facilities, which continue to earn design awards and national acclaim.

Chad has three decades of experience and leads the Education studio. With more than $1 billion in successful projects, Chad’s portfolio is flush with creative and meaningful work, contributing to greater student attention, academic achievement, and instructional success.

Context and character of place are foundational for Chad’s noteworthy designs. Take Erie High School, where Chad incorporated contextual materials like wood beams, black brick, and metal panels to honor the community’s 150-year mining history. For 21st-century learners, he embraced natural light to spill through the contemporary exterior, spreading throughout the learning environment to improve student and teacher performance.

Chad’s heart lies in the mountains, where he enjoys the outdoors and exploring nooks and crannies with his wife and two kids. He finds being out in the great wilderness allows him to clear his head and allows him to “slow down and get simple!”