About
Chris Ernst, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP, is a senior architect and practice leader with more than 30 years of experience, recognized for aligning diverse stakeholders and multidisciplinary teams to deliver high-performing, large-scale projects in complex urban environments across New York City and the broader region. As Managing Principal for Architecture in the New York Studio, he helps shape practice strategy, drives opportunity generation through trusted client relationships, and advances innovation and thought leadership through active engagement in industry forums and organizations.
Over the course of his career, Chris has led major mixed-use developments that integrate residential, hospitality, retail, and community-serving uses; workplace environments, including Class-A office buildings; institutional and university components embedded within dense urban sites; and adaptive reuse projects that reposition historic structures as contemporary destinations. His expertise spans early feasibility, zoning, site and program analysis, entitlement strategy, and design leadership from concept through delivery. He protects design intent through disciplined collaboration with clients and consultants, aligning teams to deliver complex projects with clarity and purpose. A pragmatic consensus builder, and problem solver, Chris advances firm culture and brand by building high-performing teams and investing in talent development.
His portfolio includes The Willoughby, 89 DeKalb, and Dock 72 in Brooklyn; Ironside Newark in Newark, New Jersey; 1520 First Avenue and 106 West 56th Street in Manhattan; Lighthouse Point in Staten Island; 200 East 125th Street in East Harlem; and Harborside Plaza 10 in Jersey City, New Jersey.