Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn Architects

The firm was founded as Building Systems Development by Ezra Ehrenkrantz in 1959 in Berkeley, California. In the early 1960s, Ehrenkrantz developed the School Construction Systems Development (SCSD) project, an influential systems building approach for the construction of public schools which resulted in the design of dozens of schools in California.

In 1972, Ehrenkrantz established an office in New York, renamed the firm The Ehrenkrantz Group, and became founding director of the Center for Architecture & Building Science Research at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. In addition to developing building systems, the Ehrenkrantz Group designed housing, educational, health, laboratory and commercial buildings. The Ehrenkrantz Group's work included master plans for New York City Technical College in Brooklyn and Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ, and facilities renewal at Columbia. From 1966 to 1968, Ezra Ehrenkrantz served on the White House Task Force on the City. In 1990, he received the President's Award of the National Institute of Building Sciences, and in 1991 won the Presidential Design Award for a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital unit. He was awarded the Medal of Honor of the American Institute of Architects' New York chapter in 1993.

In 1986, Stanton Eckstut joined the firm and the Ehrenkrantz Group became known as The Ehrenkrantz Group and Eckstut Architects. Eckstut was previously director of the Urban Design program at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Together with former partner Alex Cooper, he was responsible for the Master Plan for Battery Park City, winner of the Urban Land Institute's 2010 Heritage Award, which cited the Plan for having "facilitated the private development of 9.3 million square feet of commercial space, 7.2 million square feet of residential space, and nearly 36 acres of open space in lower Manhattan, becoming a model for successful large-scale planning efforts and marking a positive shift away from the urban renewal mindset of the time." In 1997, Denis Kuhn, a noted preservationist, became a partner in the firm, which then became Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn (EE&K) Architects. In 2010, EE&K Architects and Perkins Eastman announced that they would merge.