We are an architectural, planning, and interior design firm. Our office is located at 19 North Franklin Street in Lambertville, New Jersey. Our firm is presently composed of one Principal Architect and Professional Planner, one Graduate Architect, one designer, and one Administrator. Currently, our firm is very active in The City of Lambertville, Montgomery and Princeton Townships, as well as numerous towns and communities throughout New Jersey and Pennsylvania. We have previously executed projects in every major city within the United States and Canada.

Our organization was established in 1983, and we benefit from Michael Burns, our Principal Architect and Professional Planner’s twenty-nine years of experience in the practice with his own, as well as some of the most highly regarded firms in the country. We also employ a core of graduate architects on our staff from many noteworthy design schools nationwide.

The architectural work of our office reflects a consistent enthusiasm and determination to solve current problems with solutions cultivated from traditional ideals and methodologies which have been proven successful throughout time. This is repeatedly evidenced in our planning, programming and design work conducted for specialized learning environments, private schools, institutes of higher learning, municipal governments, the commercial industry, and the residential community.

Our firm has substantial experience in the master planning, programming, design and development of large scale environments. We are equally well-experienced in implementing projects in phases and under conditions requiring maintenance of operations during construction. We have completed several phases of the Princeton Montessori School campus over the past twenty years all of which required maintaining the operations of the school throughout construction.

Our large scale planning and programming experience also includes the “University Heights Science Park” master plan development project. This large scale master planning/ urban design project for a fifty-acre site in Newark, New Jersey involved the collaborative effort of the four academic institutions in the city, Rutgers University, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Essex Community College, and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, as well as local industry and corporations.

We are adept at both new construction and rehabilitation and historic preservation work. Notably, our firm has developed a large number of projects which required sensitive planning, design, expansion, addition, and historical preservation of existing structures including restoration of the Lambertville Public Library, the conversion for the Lambertville Justice Center and the conversion for the Restaurant One 53 in Rocky Hill. We have been awarded twenty-five design citations for some of these projects, with awards presented by the AIA/New Jersey, Somerset County Planning Board, The American Planning Association, and the Princeton Historical Preservation Society. These awards were given in recognition of our faithful, sensitive, and innovative approach to the expansion and reuse of these facilities.

We have extensive experience and take great pride in our ability to work with building committees, state and municipal officials, historic review committees, planning boards, and other local boards and various approval agencies in an effort to successfully develop projects which meet the requirements of these groups, and which are positive additions to the context and environment of the community in which they are built.

We have been recognized by the AIA/New Jersey and awarded commendations for our work. We have also received the Somerset County Land Development and Planning Award for our work five times. We were awarded a Design of the Year Award by New Jersey Monthly Magazine, we received the American Planning Association Award for outstanding reuse of an existing building, and we were awarded the Excellence in Downtown Development Award from Downtown New Jersey Inc.

Many articles featuring Michael Burns Architect’s projects have been widely published, including articles regarding the award-winning planning, design, and phased expansion program for the Princeton Montessori School, the historic restoration and alterations for the conversion for Restaurant One 53 and the conversion of the Lambertville Acme building to the Lambertville Justice Center.

As a final point of interest, our Principal Architect and Professional Planner, Michael Burns, is currently commissioned as an adjunct professor for Drexel University’s Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design Department of Architecture. Mr. Burns was also honored by New Jersey Institute of Technology and given the University’s Excellence in Teaching Award for Teaching by an Adjunct Professor.