Eric Colbert & Associates

Eric Colbert & Associates is a Washington, D.C., architecture firm that Eric Colbert founded in 1982. Early on its work was mostly rehabilitating run-down apartment buildings for low- and moderate-income residents, and over the years it moved into market-rate apartments, condominiums, mixed-use buildings and larger new construction. ECA works from 5th Street NW near Chinatown and also serves as executive architect alongside big-name national design firms. It covers planning, sustainable design, historic preservation and interiors, and it’s best known for transformational residential and mixed-use work. ECA designed The Faircliff, a 125-unit, all-electric, LEED Platinum affordable building in Columbia Heights that Phius named its best project of 2026.

One service on ECA’s list deserves explanation because owners often misread it. The firm acts as executive architect, a role it added in the years after the Great Recession: a national or international design firm sets the concept, and ECA takes it through documentation, permitting and construction inside the Washington market. It is not a junior role. Someone has to know DC’s zoning, historic review and permitting realities well enough to make a visiting firm’s concept actually get built, and that is a specific competence rather than a lesser one.

The firm’s own trajectory explains how it got there. When Eric Colbert founded the practice in 1982, the work was mostly rehabilitating deteriorated apartment buildings for low- and moderate-income residents. Mixed-use programs appeared in the 2000s, new construction came to predominate, and average project sizes grew. The portfolio today is weighted toward multifamily residential and mixed-use throughout the District and beyond.

Design philosophy is stated without decoration: design is a process of exploring possibilities, and architecture is a fusion of aesthetics, function and construction practice. In the urban sites where most of the firm’s work sits, that last term – construction practice – is the one that keeps a building buildable within a tight lot and a fixed budget.

The award record spans housing, preservation and urban design juries rather than one category. Recent recognition includes a ULI Washington Excellence in Housing Development award in 2023 for The Wray, an AIA Southern New York design award for 444 W State St in 2022-23, an Outstanding Project award from Lambda Alpha International, an ACEC Metropolitan Washington honour for West Half, a 2019 award for excellence in historic preservation, an AIA Washingtonian Residential award in 2018 for a dream addition, and a NAIOP Best Multi-Family Project award for 5333 Connecticut.

The office is at 717 5th Street NW, near Chinatown. Services are listed as architecture, sustainable design, planning, historic preservation and interior design, and the firm recruits around a stated interest in rejuvenating emerging DC neighbourhoods.