01 — THE FIRM
What is nSCALE?
nSCALE Design & Development is a development advisory and architecture firm founded in 2021 by Christopher Pettis, NCARB. Based in Columbus, Ohio, and licensed in Ohio, New York, and North Carolina, the firm works across the Midwest, East Coast, and Appalachia on affordable housing, green infrastructure, and catalytic community projects.
02 — TEAM
Who is on the nSCALE team?
Christopher Pettis
Founder & Managing Principal
Murewa Ogunkoya
Architectural Designer III
Emma Oisamoje
Architectural Designer II
Janvi Soni
Architectural Designer I
Nicole Pettis
Operations Manager & Interior Decorator
03 — FOUNDER
Who is Christopher Pettis?
Christopher Pettis, NCARB, is the Founder and Managing Principal of nSCALE Design & Development. He has 12+ years designing and managing large-scale architectural and commercial real estate projects, including Singapore's Changi Airport Terminal 5 MRT Interchange Station and 17xM in Washington, DC.
He served as Associate Principal at Kohn Pedersen Fox in New York from 2014 to 2021, where he worked on institutional-scale commercial and infrastructure projects. He holds a B.A. in Architecture with a minor in Chinese Language and Culture from Miami University (Ohio), and completed the CIEE Intensive Chinese Language Program at Peking University. He is a graduate of the Emerging Developers Accelerator Program (EDAP), Cohort III, and Project REAP Academy's 10-Week CRE Intro Course.
He is a registered architect in Ohio, New York, and North Carolina, and a registered interior designer in North Carolina. He is a Dayton, Ohio native.
04 — SELECTED PAST WORK
What did the team design before nSCALE?
Before founding nSCALE, Christopher Pettis was an Associate Principal at Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) in New York, where he designed and managed large-scale institutional, commercial, and infrastructure projects across the globe. A selection of that work:
17×M
Washington, DC
Changi Airport Terminal 5
Singapore
Changi Airport MRT Interchange
Singapore
Robinson Road
Singapore
CCSB Atrium
New York, NY
One Willoughby Square
Brooklyn, NY
Red Hook Houses
Brooklyn, NY
Red Hook Houses — Site Plan
Brooklyn, NY
The Longwood
Boston, MA
Atlantis Resort — Pool Deck
Paradise Island, Bahamas
05 — PHILOSOPHY
What does nSCALE believe?
nSCALE believes that the buildings people need most — affordable housing, community health centers, resilience hubs, and civic space — are the buildings that get the least design attention. We believe that the communities most affected by disinvestment should have the most say in what gets built, and that good design is not a luxury but a tool for equity. We believe that green infrastructure and sustainable building are not add-ons but foundations, and that a project that can't afford to be sustainable can't afford to be built. We believe in numbers over adjectives, in honesty over marketing, and in publishing our method so clients can see how the work gets done.