I’m Eric Zachrison.  I’m an architect.  I’ve always wanted to be an architect.  My mother’s cousin was an architect and even before I knew what it meant, I wanted to be one.  I grew up in rural North Dakota, and moved to Chicago at 17 to attend Illinois Institute of Technology.  Many of you won’t have heard of it, but it’s a really good architecture school, famously once headed by the great Mies Van Der Rohe, and still teaches a highly technical approach and favors an international, ‘modern’ style.  And it is nestled in Chicago, which is itself a museum of great architecture.  It was an incredible environment to learn.

After Graduating, I started working for Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, one of the most influential and best firms of the last century.  I learned a lot about putting buildings together and about the management of teams.  In the Chicago Office, I was uniquely positioned on a number of large scale residential projects, though that is not what that office was known for at the time.  I got to work on projects in Detroit and Milwaukee, but also the Middle East and China.  Working in these different cultures and climates, on people’s homes taught me to really think about what is expected and what can be delightful.  Some of our greatest experiences were in discovering new ways of doing things, and in sharing those ideas with other clients and friends.

In 2006, I started an MBA program at Booth at the University of Chicago.  While I knew SOM could teach me a lot about building, I wanted to better understand our clients and allies, and how they approached their businesses.  And, inspired by Nat Owings, was curious how outside ideas could help our company grow and serve clients better.  The amazing opportunities at SOM kept me there, and in Chicago, but in the evenings, I was able to explore the wider world of business.  

At the end of 2010, with my degree completed, and nothing tying me so tightly to Chicago, my good friend and former boss hired me as a business manager and technical designer for his new firm which would be based mostly in Delhi.  Five of us Americans, and one Scot, hired a team of young and motivated Indian Architects and moved to the suburbs of Delhi to be close to a massive new development that we were helping to plan.  Roads were being cut and buildings built, as we developed a ‘detailed design’ for this new development that would eventually be home to 750,000 people. 

And then, the housing bubble burst in India.  And we repositioned our team and were quickly acquired by Cannon Design in Chicago.  There, as their City Design team, we worked primarily with the Education and Health Care teams on Urban Scale planning for the large campuses often required by Universities and Hospitals. 

After 3 years of this, shortly after I’d met and married my wife, we moved to Boston where the opportunities for her work with health care research were unmatched anywhere else.  I was working from the Boston office of Cannon Design when my future partner called me and told me he was quitting Cannon and would I help him start the firm we’d been talking about for more than five years.  Together we founded context to be a firm that was more community and service based than we’d been able to be in our previous firms.  We’ll always be thankful to Soul City Church for being that first client and giving us the seed to start this. 

And, for the next few years, I worked largely on that Church and with friends on projects in Brownsville, Texas and Miami, while trying to develop connections within the industry here in Boston.  Initially there were a few developer clients, and we learned a lot about this part of the industry, local expectations and myriad zoning processes.  Through these friends, we were put in contact with more homeowners and clients and now have projects ranging from roof decks to 80+ unit new construction buildings. 

And are so blessed to have a team of really fun and excited young architects, ready to meet clients and help improve their homes and neighborhoods.