A unified approach to the construction of weighing matrices and certain symmetric designs is presented. Assuming the weight $p$ in a weighing matrix $W(n,p)$ is a prime power, it is shown that there is a $$W\left(\frac{p^{m+1}-1}{p-1}(n-1)+1,p^{m+1}\right)$$ for each positive integer $m$. The case of $n=p+1$ reduces to the balanced weighing matrices with classical parameters $$W\left(\frac{p^{m+2}-1}{p-1},p^{m+1}\right).$$ The equivalence with certain classes of association schemes is discussed in details.