Erik Holliday, son of local architect Michael Holliday, has joined his father’s business DMHA Architecture + Interior Design in Santa Barbara as a senior project architect.

Erik Holliday graduated first in his class from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s Architecture Program in 2012, when Cal Poly was ranked the No. 1 undergraduate architecture program in the nation.

Since graduation, he has spent the past 12 years with LPA Design Studios in Irvine, a leading architecture firm.

With more than 550 staff and six offices nationwide, LPA was recently named the 2025 AIA National Firm of the Year, and Holliday played a key role on several of the California projects highlighted in that recognition.

After a career at LPA, including being named the firm’s 2024 Design Professional of the Year, Holliday has decided to leave the corporate world in Orange County and return home to Santa Barbara to join us at DMHA Architecture + Interior Design, Michael Holliday said.

“What makes this especially timely is that Erik was recognized as the youth speaker at the upcoming 2026 South Coast Business & Technology Awards Gala on June 23,” Michael Holliday said.

“His story is one of a local Santa Barbara native who left to learn from some of the best in the profession, built an award-winning career, and is now bringing that experience back home to help shape the future of our community,” he said.

DMHA Architecture’s local projects over the past several years include Linden Square in Carpinteria, Oku, Flor de Maiz, and Biergarten in Santa Barbara’s Funk Zone, The Inn at Mattei’s Tavern in Los Olivos, Westmont’s recently completed Downtown Campus on Anapamu Street, as well as its current work with Santa Barbara Humane in Goleta and the new Music Academy of the West – Music Education Center in downtown Santa Barbara.