The 25 – Stephen P. Ekman

Stephen P. Ekman is the founder and principal architect of the eponymous award-winning boutique architectural firm in Denver that crafts new custom homes and does historic house renovations and residential restoration projects in a variety of vernacular styles while maintaining context and proportion through the classical language.

The homes the firm designs, one of which won a Palladio Award in 2024 and another that was recognized with an ICAA Newman Award in 2014, are imbued with timeless beauty that makes them generational residences suited for modern life.

Some four decades ago, Ekman began his career as an Imagineer for Walt Disney under the tutelage of Disney’s nephew, Roy E. Disney, and mentor Jim Parks.

The principles he learned there—design team collaboration, precedent research, elegant proportions promoting well-being, and attention to detail—carry though to his projects today.

Ekman’s Disney experience, as well as the work of architectural luminaries Edwin Lutyens, Julia Morgan, McKim Mead & White, Frank Lloyd Wright, and early Colorado architects, including Jacques Benedict and Frank Edbrooke, continue to inspire him.

Ekman, who has served as a trustee of Historic Denver and the Littleton Historic Preservation Commission, is the president of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art.

He helped establish the Classical Studies Program at the University of Colorado Denver, College of Architecture and Planning, to provide students with a working knowledge of traditional architectural principles and precedents that encourages beauty, community, and sustainability within the built environment.

“Passing on this knowledge of craftsmanship and the passion of place-making to the next generation of emerging design professionals is vitally important in educating the community around us to appreciate the historic fabric of where they live, promoting its culture and a sense of place,” he says.