The founder of Bernardon Haber Holloway Architects in Kennett Square has been invited to judge an underground commercial street project in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province.
Additionally, he will meet with officials in Shanghai to discuss the design of a senior-living project. The trip is planned for late September after the hubbub of the Olympics has subsided.
"There was a delegation that visited some of our projects unbeknownst to us," Bernardon said last week from the company's McFarlan Road headquarters. "I'll be headed over there shortly to critique a master plan in Chengdu and to offer advice. We'll see where it goes from there but, yes, we do hope to have some work there."
China would be a huge leap for the company Bernardon founded in 1973 as a one-man architectural firm.
It has grown to include three offices, in Kennett Square, Downingtown and Wilmington, with 72 staff members and is registered
to provide architectural services in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, as well as in Georgia, Ohio, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
Its design projects are some of the most notable in Chester County and the region, including:
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The company also has an interiors planning studio, BHH Tait Interiors, that provides programming, space needs analysis, space planning, strategic planning, interior finishes selection, and furniture selection and specification.
Bernardon Haber Holloway has survived and grown because it stuck to old-fashioned business principles instead of trying to be a firm that caters splashy projects, executives said.
"We run our business like a business," said Kerry R. Haber, a principal at the company along with William E. Holloway and Neil Liebman. "A lot of design firms are trying to create a legacy. Seventy-five to 80 percent of our work is with repeat clients."
Added Holloway: "It's all about relationships, listening to clients and what their goals are. Sometimes that doesn't happen in this industry because of the 'art.' We want the 'art,' but ..."
While a small business by employee numbers, the firm would be considered a medium to large architectural firm, Holloway said.
"Most firms our size you'll see in Center City," he said. "Ninety percent of architectural companies have under 10 employees."
Diversification has also been a key to staying in business for 35 years.
When the office building market crashed in the late 1980s, Bernardon Haber Holloway could turn to other markets — education, golf and country clubs, government, hotels, industrial, medical, religious, residential, retail and senior living — to take up the slack, Haber said.
"No one client is worth more than 5 percent of our business," Haber said. "We want to grow, but we're not looking to grow for growth's sake."
One area of growth for the firm today is "green" building. It recently completed its most ambitious project at Dansko, the Jennersville comfort footwear company.
Paul Andrew Sgroi, the associate who worked with Dansko in designing the building, said other companies would be wise to begin thinking about their buildings in environmental terms.
"With (electric rate) deregulation coming in 2011, you can plan for that," Sgroi said.
Until recently by historic standards, buildings in different parts of the world were built differently to take into account climate differences, natural light and material availability, he noted.
"The Mayans didn't import clay from Pennsylvania when they were building," Sgroi said. "This is not new, really. This has been going on for thousands of years."
