Architect David Hertz is the founder and president of David Hertz FAIA Architects, inc. and S.E.A., the Studio of Environmental Architecture, which he established as Syndesis in 1984 and skysource.org in 2016.
David graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture Degree from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-ARC) in 1983. In 2006 David was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award from Sci-Arc. In 2008 David was elected to the prestigious American Institute of Architects College of Fellows as one of it’s youngest member in its over 155 year history.
David Hertz’s award-winning work has been widely published and exhibited internationally. Some highlights include exhibitions in the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the National Building Museum, and the Cooper Hewitt Museum, as well as inclusion in the Venice and Istanbul Architectural biennales, having won the American Architecture Award in 2009 and 2012 respectively.
The work of S.E.A. has been included in over a hundred books and periodicals worldwide. Key highlights include two covers of Dwell, inclusion in Met Home’s Design 100, and a profile in Vanity Fair Magazine. Hertz’s 747 Wing House won a 2012 Record Houses award and the 2016 Architizer A+ Award and has been widely published and documented worldwide, including a 2017 feature on World's Most Extraordinary Homes on Netflix. In 2016 a monograph, The Restorative Home: Ecological Houses of David Hertz was published by Oro Press.
David is a founding member of the AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE) as well as the USGBC and was involved in the first LEED Platinum Commercial and Residential Projects in the U.S. Since 1990 David has been on the Academic Advisory Committee and the faculty of the UCLA Arc-ID Program teaching sustainable design courses.
David has also taught at the USC School of Architecture, SCI-ARC and Art Center College of Design. David has been serving on the Task Force of the Environment for the City of Santa Monica for over 20 years, co-authoring the city's Green Building Ordinance. David serves on the board of directors of Heal The Bay and is involved in numerous social and environmental non-profits and pro-bono services, including founding the GO Water Initiative with the Go Campaign, where he is bringing Skywater atmospheric water generators through skysource.org to address water scarcity and water quality worldwide. In 2018 David led his Skysource team to the grand prize winner in the Water Abundance XPRIZE out of a field of 98 teams from 27 countries to make 2,000 liters of water from air in 24 hours using 100% renewable energy at a cost of less than 2 cents/liter.