DeWitt Architects team looks to new horizons.

You might have heard of them from the buzz surrounding Donald Trump's new Jersey City development or have seen the spectacular work they had done on private houses in the Syrian community of Brooklyn.

But though Peter DeWitt Architects is a firm best known for its residential portfolio, its two main partners--Erica Lindenbaum Tishman and Peter DeWitt--actually have experience in a wide range of architecture projects.

According to DeWitt, at Beyer Blinder Belle, where he spent close to 11 years, his responsibilities included design work for such developments as the Barney's Women's Department Store in downtown Manhattan and the Denver Center for the Arts.

"Having been a partner at BBB for three years, I decided I wanted to start my own business and obviously when you are just starting, you can't do complex projects," he explains. "So I started by doing house renovations."

Within several years, former clients from BBB were hiring DeWitt to do multi-family projects all along the New Jersey coast. He hired an assistant and eventually brought on board Erica, with whom he struck up a friendship while both of them worked at BBB.

"I had great opportunities [at that firm], worked on really large projects," Lindenbaum recalls. "But I was on my third child and Peter was willing to take me in on terms that were workable for me."

Through Erica's connections, DeWitt Architects was able to get the assignment for the creation of a luxury condo-minium building at 124 Hudson St., on the site of a Tribeca parking lot. The project, which required zoning changes and Landmarks Preservation approval and had gone through two different developers, won the firm the 2005 Palladio Award for the design of a multi-unit building.

But for Lindenbaum and DeWitt, the recognition has been important not so much for its prestige as for helping them break into the Manhattan residential market, a notoriously challenging area.

"Most of our work has been in New Jersey, with the exception of 124 Hudson St., and I sometimes find it limiting when I talk to New York developers," DeWitt explains. "They refer to us as the Jersey guys. But the projects are the same in New Jersey as they are in New York."

"Manhattan is a very tight market. But there is certainly a lot of work available now in the outer boroughs," Lindenbaum adds.

Both architects say they enjoy working with residential clients--the private owners allow them to use their creativity and apartment building developers tend to be easy to please,--but they would also like to include other kinds of structures in their portfolio.

Lindenbaum, in particular, would like to do school designs again, an area she specialized in while she was at BBB.

"We like projects with a program, projects where you have to think about how people move through the space," DeWitt says.

"You do that in an apartment building, but only on the ground level."

"It's a little hard to break into institutional work--it takes a leap of faith [on behalf of the client]," Lindenbaum notes. "But we'd love to move into that."

In general, both partners agree that the most important thing for them is to deliver a unique product, be it an apartment building, a retail establishment or an elementary school.

"We are very much about the way the project looks," DeWitt notes. "We try to invest it with something that will distinguish it from other properties."