Davey McEathron, AIA

founder + principal architect
davey@daveymarch.com

Davey McEathron has been designing buildings, furniture, and public art in Austin since 2008. He's an award-winning architect with an unusual origin story: Houston-born, raised on Tex-Mex and punk rock, and about a decade into adulthood before he ever picked up a T-square. Before architecture, Davey spent years fronting Texas indie rock bands as a singer and guitar player - touring, recording, and learning a different kind of design discipline: how to design with sound.

He eventually traded the stage for a studio, studying architecture at Portland State University - a city that shaped his thinking on urban design and sustainability long before those became buzzwords. Summers there were spent at Allusa Architecture, under the mentorship of Bob Schatz.

But Portland's rain has its limits. Missing good Mexican food and hot summers, Davey came back to Texas after graduation and built a career the hard way - working across firms of every size and nearly every project type imaginable: residential design/build, multi-family, academic housing, commercial, religious, civic, urban planning, public pool complexes, even a police academy pistol range. By 2014, he'd seen enough to know exactly what kind of practice he wanted to run - so he started Davey McEathron Architecture, built around select projects and select clients.

Since then, the ambitions have only grown. With his wife, Rebecca, Davey co-founded Rock Paper Build - a design/build/develop venture that also takes on bespoke collaborations, like designing tile and wallpaper for local tile manufacturer Clay Imports.

And after 18 years off, the guitar came back out of the case: Davey's playing again with Schatzi, proof that some chapters don't so much end as go on hiatus.