Tom Samyn and Ward D’Elia set up shop in a lightly-renovated, old post and beam sugar house on a single-lane dirt road in Holderness, NH. It sounds like a pioneer story and actually, that’s just what it was. Tom and Ward shared a desk, their suppers, and Tom’s high school manual typewriter. “We’d work till eight or so, eat dinner and then work until midnight," D’Elia remembers (though that may be an uphill-both-ways-to-school kind of story). The fledgling firm’s first commission was for an underground house, their second for the home of a friend who is still a client today. Their knowledge of early sustainable design snagged them their first commercial project, condos in Watervillle Valley, NH.  D’Elia says, “We knew we were taking off when we were arguing about whether or not to purchase an electric typewriter.” For the record, Tom was for the purchase, Ward was against it. They bought that typewriter and never looked back. SDA eventually outgrew the sugar house and Tom and Ward each got their own desks in a renovated gristmill which housed the offices of SDA for almost 40 years. In 2018, they began renovation work on a grand old summer inn just down the road in Holderness, NH, and set up shop in their new studio in the fall of 2019.