A licensed architecture and design/build studio founded on the belief that great homes start with great values — sustainability, craft, and care for how people actually live.
Long before Elliot Nolter was a licensed architect, he was a kid drawing buildings and digging foundations by hand. That instinct — to both imagine and build — never went away. It just got sharper.
After studying classical architecture at Barnstone Studios and competing in the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon at Penn State, Elliot spent nine years at a traditional architecture firm learning the discipline of the craft. But something was missing: the direct connection between design intent and built reality.
In 2018, he founded East Spruce Design Build to close that gap — one studio that designs and builds, where sustainability is not an upgrade and every decision answers to the people who will live in the space.
East Spruce is housed in a renovated 19th-century carriage house in Bethlehem, PA. The building itself is fossil-fuel free, with EV charging, indoor bike storage, smart daylighting, and rooftop solar pushing it toward net-zero.
Most of the materials in the renovation are salvaged or sustainably sourced. The studio is not a showroom — it is proof. Every decision we advocate for our clients, we have already tested on ourselves.
We use the SAVE framework — Saving time, money, resources, and energy at every stage. Not as a premium add-on, but as the baseline for every project we take on.
Our design horizon is 100 years. We think about how a building performs across generations, not just the day it is finished. The most sustainable building is the one that is already standing — so we preserve, adapt, and build to last.
Elliot is a licensed architect in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, a Certified Passive House Consultant, and a Sustainable Homes Professional. He studied classical architecture at Barnstone Studios and spent nearly a decade in a traditional firm before founding East Spruce.
He is involved in every project from the first phone call to the final walkthrough — not as a manager reviewing plans, but as the designer and builder making the decisions. That is deliberate. It is the only way to ensure the design intent survives construction.
Outside the studio, Elliot is an outdoor enthusiast and a steward of the land — values that show up in every structure he designs.
PA & NJ
Certified Passive House Consultant
Sustainable Homes Professional
American Institute of Architects
