The 25 – Daniela Holt Voith, FAIA

The founding partner and director of design at the Philadelphia and New York-based architecture studio Voith & Mactavish Architects, Daniela Holt Voith designs for the educational market.

The firm has provided planning and design services to some of the country’s most prestigious educational institutions, including Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.

It also has worked on a number of National Historic Landmarks, including the Mercer Museum, the Bryn Mawr Film Institute, the Old Library at Bryn Mawr College, and the Centennial Bank, which is now the Paul Peck Alumni Center for Drexel University.

“As we design, we are thinking about our core values—tradition, innovation, context, craft, beauty, and sustainability—and these values continue to be an unusual, but vital, mix to create buildings that are meaningful to our clients and contexts in which they sit,” says Voith.

Her projects, which use technology to create the most sustainable designs possible, spotlight the impact of design on human experience and on the natural environment.

They promote collegiality and adaptability, blur the lines between disciplines to learning environments, expand an institution’s capacity to realize its mission and broaden its reach, break down barriers to student risk-taking and success, and elevate the student experience.

Throughout her career, education has always been at the forefront of Voith’s thinking.

“I am not only an architect but also an educator,” says Voith, who was a teaching assistant at Yale, a co-studio critic at Penn and Drexel, and the developer of the studio program at Bryn Mawr College that started in 1983.

Some of her former students are now her fellow partners at her firm, and others have set up their own firms around the world.

“This lasting impact makes me happy,” she says. “Mentorship, both by teaching and through our office internships, and particularly for women, is a great joy in my life as well.”