Dewing Schmid Kearns Architects + Planners

Dewing Schmid Kearns Architects + Planners is an architecture and planning firm based in Concord, Massachusetts. The practice works largely for institutional clients, with a portfolio weighted toward academic libraries, campus buildings, independent schools and civic projects across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. Library work is a recognizable specialty, particularly renovations that convert collection-storage space into study and collaboration space while working within protected historic exteriors. The firm is architect for the $64 million renovation and expansion of Lilly Library at Duke University, a 1927 building on Duke’s East Campus that grows 78 percent to 56,300 square feet behind a preserved Georgian facade.

The practice trades publicly as studioDSK, while the legal entity remains Dewing Schmid Kearns Architects + Planners, P.C. It runs two studios: the Concord office at 30 Monument Square and a second studio at 280 Elm Street in South Dartmouth, in the village of Padanaram. The firm describes itself as a 36-person advisory, planning, architecture, and interior design practice, and it treats those four services as one integrated offering rather than separate departments.

The advisory arm is the part of the business least visible from the outside. It partners with presidents, CEOs, and boards to shape early thinking and build consensus before drawings begin, and it extends into leadership coaching, governance structures, fundraising strategy, and financial tracking. Planning work is data-driven and program-focused: campus space analysis, scheduling and financial modeling, space programming, and feasibility studies. Interiors run from spatial planning through furnishings, lighting, and detailing.

Leadership carries the credentials that shape the work. Thomas D. Kearns, FAIA, LEED AP, is president and was elected to the American Institute of Architects’ College of Fellows for contributions to design; he spent a decade as academic program coordinator for Leadership and Design Thinking at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Amy Sheehan Latva-Kokko, AIA, LEED AP, CPHD, is Director of Sustainability and leads the firm’s commitments to AIA 2030 and the AIA A&D Materials Pledge, with high-performance work in learning environments, custom residences, and water-focused infrastructure.

Geographically the studio anchors in New England but reaches further. It serves clients across Boston, the Cape and Islands, the South Shore, and Newport, and takes on select private island projects in the British Virgin Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Bahamas. Recent projects on the books include the David Center for Ocean Innovation at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Centennial Arts Center at Concord Academy, Harbor View, and Point Estate.

Recognition listed by the firm includes Architectural Record’s Top 300 Architecture Firms for 2026, Dezeen Jobs Top Companies 2026, BSA Design Awards for Marymount Manhattan College’s The Judy and Brewster Academy’s Grayson Student Center, and Architectural Innovator of the Year from the Northeast Renewable Energy Coalition.