Stearns Design Build

Stearns Design Build

We would like to post a profile of a different local business every Friday.  I post this by way of providing an example of the sort of thing that we hope to include. The more that we know about our local businesses and the people who run them the more connected we will be as a community. If you are a local independent business owner or director of a local nonprofit we would like to feature your organization.  Please let us know.


Stearns Design Build was started in December of 1993 as Stearns Construction.  Owner Hugh Stearns had just finished a degree in psychology from TAMU. The idea was to take on a few remodeling jobs until May when his wife, Linda, who was a school teacher at the time, would be finished with her school year. At that time the plan was to move to Austin where Hugh would go to graduate school.  When May rolled around Hugh had a couple of employees and more jobs lined up, so he suggested that they delay the move for a year.  It turns out that Hugh, who grew up in College Station Bryan, was more interested in owning a construction company than going to graduate school and that move was never made.

Now, twenty years later, the company includes design as well as construction and the primary focus is on green building.  The company has developed its own articulation of design theory called Transitions that challenges some of the precepts of green building with its emphasis on connection to natural and community environments.  Stearns says, “the important relationship is less the building to the environment than it is the people in the building to their environment.”  Nonetheless, the company remains focused on building science as well as connections beyond the building. Stearns design Build employs ten people including production, design and office staff.