Sheri Fabian,
Founding Principal
Sheri Fabian is a licensed architect in New York and a founding partner of Local Architects. She holds a BS in Architecture from the University of Maryland and a Master of Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design. She began her architectural career at Square134 Architects, David M Schwarz Architects, and Cunningham Quill in Washington DC, where she specialized in the design of large housing and entertainment projects throughout the country. After RISD, she worked at Elkus Manfredi Architects in Boston, managing digital design for the Boston Children’s Hospital, Miami WorldCenter, and NYC’s Hudson Yards retail complexes. Sheri has taught at RISD, The Boston Architectural College, and SUNY Delhi, and frequently participates in collegiate design reviews around the country.
Upon moving to upstate NY in 2018, Sheri began a small practice called Sheri Fabian Studios. As her practice grew, she developed a love for residential design and the opportunity to work intimately with owners on a daily basis in such a spectacular setting. United in their goals to deliver quality service and artful works of architecture to the region, Sheri and Brook teamed up to form Local Architects.
Sheri and her husband Max restored a 100-year old house in the village of Delhi over the 8 years since moving to upstate NY. They raise two small daughters and enjoy village life by volunteering, sitting on the Zoning Advisory Committee, frequenting local festivals, and being good neighbors. Sheri enjoys long valley views from the top of local hiking trails and taking trips to the big city to remember what it is like to ride public transportation.
Brook Denison,
Founding Principal
Brook Denison is a local architect in Delaware County, New York and a founding partner of Local Architects. Since moving to Bovina in 2011, he has been a SUNY Delhi professor, built structures and practiced architecture.
Prior to co-founding Local Architects, he worked for David M. Schwarz in Washington DC where he was a senior associate in charge of design and on-site construction administration for The Linq, a street of buildings anchored by a large wheel ride at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas. During this period, he taught architectural design at Notre Dame and Yale University and became a licensed architect. Before DC, Brook studied architecture at Yale, where he received a Masters of Architecture in 2007. During that time, Brook taught history of photography, drawing and architectural theory at Yale College. He was awarded the Gene Lewis Book Prize for demonstrating promise in residential architecture and the George Nelson Fellowship to draw and write about the monolithic churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia which was published in journal Perspecta 41.
With his wife Janet, he lives in a house he and friend Kent Tittle built on land once part of historic Meridale Farms in Meredith, NY. He is passionate about the history of Delaware County’s buildings, landscape and agrarian traditions. As a Meredith Planning Board member and a director of Bovina’s Livestock Foundation, he enjoys the comradery of small town life. An appreciator of trees, dogs, old barns, farmhouses and fishing in local creeks, streams and rivers, Brook believes that architectural education should include time spent building things with other people.
Janet Ho,
Associate
Janet has been a devoted resident and advocate of our Catskills community and its local architecture since 2011. She is a registered architect in New York State and a Professor of Architecture at SUNY Delhi, where she teaches courses in Architectural Design and the History of Architecture.
Janet contributes to Local Architects her 20 years of experience in the field, ranging from restaurant and commercial projects at CORE architecture + design in Washington, DC, to working with an international team of architects and designers on a mixed use master planning project in Moscow with Kohn Pedersen Fox Architects (KPF) in London, England, to residential projects in the Catskills with Denison & Ho Architects, founded in 2012 with her partner and husband Brook. She received a BA in Urban Studies from Stanford University and a Master's in Architecture from Yale University, where she was a graduate teaching assistant and an editor of the Yale Retrospecta.
When not practicing or teaching, Janet can be found outside hiking with her pack of rescue dogs, experimenting with recipes in her kitchen, planning the next international adventure, or tackling the never-ending construction projects on the house she designed and built with Brook in Meredith.
Max Dehne,
Associate
Maxwell Dehne is a trained architectural designer and the head of the Department of Architecture at SUNY Delhi.
Max holds a BA in Architecture from the University of Portland and a Master of Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design. He has worked at small companies such as Stanley Architecture and Lacuna in Portland and Providence, and later designed for NAGA Architecture on large-scale city complexes based in Dubai. Maxwell has taught at the Boston Architectural Collage and RISD, and is a guest lecturer and critic at multiple universities.
Max won the chancellor award at SUNY Delhi in 2024 and has served as the head of the Department of Architecture at SUNY Delhi for 5 years. His commitment to the betterment of his students and the creation of an equitable place for young people to thrive is paramount to his life in Delhi.
Max’s true passion lies in the complex overlay between architecture and community service. He worked part-time for many years at multiple non-profit organizations, most notably Down City Design in Providence, RI, where he developed and executed design-build public works projects for school-aged children. He has traveled to far reaches of the world to participate in school-based build programs, such as Ladock, India and Guatemala City. He has most humbly implemented aspects of these programs in a volunteer capacity at Delaware Academy, where his 5 year-old daughter attends school.
Max enjoys basketball, raising his young family, and 3-D printing lego and train set parts in his basement in the evenings.