In a career spanning more than 30 years Merrill Elam and her partner, Mack Scogin, have won international acclaim for work that ranges from the sleek, low-slung utility of a 330,000-square-foot factory in Canton, Ga. for furniture maker Herman Miller to the asymmetrical exuberance of the Lulu Chow Wang Campus Center for Wellesley College. Their Atlanta, Georgia-based firm, Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects, has won more than 50 design awards, including six national American Institute  of Architects Awards for Excellence. Recent projects include the new United States Federal Courthouse in Austin, Texas; new student housing at Syracuse University; the Yale University Health Services Center; the Gates Center for Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University; the Knowlton School of Architecture for The Ohio State University; the Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library for the University of California at Berkeley; and the Zhongkai Sheshan Villas in Shanghai, China. In addition to architecture, the firm also engages in graphic design, exhibit design, interior design, planning, programming and research.

The firm's work has been widely published in magazines and books, including the 1992 Rizzoli publication, Scogin Elam and Bray: Critical Architecture / Architectural Criticism; the 1999 University of Michigan book Mack & Merrill and the 2005 Princeton Architectural Press publication Mack Scogin Merrill Elam: Knowlton Hall. Their projects have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, Spain; the Deutches Architektur Museum in Frankfurt, Germany; and the Global Architecture Gallery in Tokyo, Japan.

Merrill Elam received her architecture degree from Georgia Tech in 1971 and then earned an MBA from Georgia State University in 1982. In addition to her practice she lectures and teaches frequently. She has been a Visiting Critic at Syracuse University, Visiting Distinguished Professor of Architecture at the City College of New York, the Gehry International Visiting Chair in Architectural Design at the University of Toronto, the Herbert Baumer Distinguished Visiting Professor at The Ohio State University, the Ruth Carter Stevenson Chair Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at The University of Texas at Austin, the Louis Henri Sullivan Research Professor of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the William Henry Bishop Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at Yale University and the Harry S. Shure Visiting Professor in Architecture at the University of Virginia. She has also served as Visiting Critic at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and SCI-Arc.  With Mack Scogin, she received the 1995 Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a 1996 Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design, the 2006 Boston Society of Architects Harleston Parker Medal and a 2008 Honorary Fellowship in the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). 

Prior to founding their own firm in 1984, Merrill Elam and Mack Scogin worked together at Heery & Heery Architects in Atlanta, designing projects that ranged from airports and hospitals to corporate and industrial campuses.