ABOUT THE FIRM

Karen A. Lee AIA founded L+AA in 2007 as part of her professional commitment to building healthy and sustainable environments. Lilian Weinreich AIA, NCARB, LEED AP joined as a partner the following year. Our award-winning design favors clean, modern form-making. Our design approach integrates sustainable principles early in the design process and aims to create buildings, interiors, landscapes, and urban interventions that respond to contemporary issues of habitation. We engage in work in the public realm and private sector at a variety of scales and have proven experience in new construction and renovation projects.

We work with government agencies, academic and cultural institutions, libraries, and theatres, as well as on private residences and urban design projects. The studio has significant expertise in historic preservation and spearheading the LEED process management and submittals for LEED certification. L+AA professionals are fully committed to sustainable building design and team exclusively with engineers with an equal vision of energy conservation. On most projects, we interface with federal, state, and/or city agencies, also SHPO, National Parks Service, NYC Landmarks, NYSERDA, and USGBC.

Our studio participates in NYC planning initiatives, both as a firm and as stakeholder:
VISION 20/20 and WAVES - WATERFRONT ACTION PLAN; The River of the People/ EAST RIVER BLUEWAY PLAN; REBUILD BY DESIGN, and remains engaged in stakeholder workshops and ongoing dialogue. The immediacy of having been flooded during Sandy sparked a studio charette for a Kips Bay 2AveStreetscape/Bioswales project for which we are currently working with NYC Parks.
L+AA is a technical advisor to NYSCA grant recipients; we advise cultural institutions on architectural expansion, operations and fund-raising components of their programs. This work gives us incredible insight into methods for addressing architectural and functional challenges from the Owners side of the table.

DESIGN PHILOSOPHY

RESILIENCE + SUSTAINABILITy

We approach our work through a process of inquiry, client collaboration, and architectural urban exploration. We map the local architectural context, broad cultural influences, historical events, perceptual stimuli, and regulatory requirements that overlap and define a particular place in time. We bring natural and local materials research and energy conservation into the first phases of the design study and fully integrate the landscape with architectural space and form. Early training in painting and the fine arts, in addition to 25 years of diverse experience in architectural design, gives the principal designers a unique sensitivity to crafting the architectural envelope, interior spaces, and their connection to the surrounding urban or rural landscape. Our staff fully understands the excellence required by state and city public agencies. We are continually optimizing our Quality Control Program as well to provide the best possible coordinated architectural service. We believe exceptional endeavors require close collaboration with clients and mutual exploration of project priorities. Guided by an ongoing commitment to architectural excellence, our studio

transforms our client’s aspirations into meaningful architectural language. We look at paths of intervention into the complicated urban fabric; interventions that will provide for long-term adaptations and more resilient buildings and infrastructure. To inform our design work, we weave local architectural context, broad cultural influences, historical events, light, view, and regulatory requirements that overlap and define a particular site in time. L+AA staff is fully committed to sustainable building design. Our studio’s newest LEED-certified building is the Kitchen Theatre Company in Ithaca, New York; the building performs 50% more efficiently than the ASHRAE standard and was awarded the NYSERDA High-Performance Building Plaque. The Partners have participated in the design of 6 “net energy exporting” buildings as architects and researchers; with William McDonough + Partners, five buildings for Nike International, in Hilversum, the Netherlands also received the AIA Award of Excellence. The sixth, the Environmental Studies Center at Oberlin College remains one of the most significant Case Study Models for High-Performance Buildings.

PRINCIPAL

Karen A. Lee AIA, LEED AP

Architecture License | State of New York

Ms. Lee holds a Master of Architecture from the Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, a Bachelor of Arts in Design of the Environment, University of Pennsylvania, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute.

Ms. Lee is the founding Principal of L+AA and our associated community organization, the urban(work)shop. Karen has 30 years of professional experience in the design and management of public, private, and not-for-profit sector projects that include highly complex renovations and new construction. Working within a wide range of typologies of small and large scale, her projects include cultural facilities and academic buildings, theatres, libraries, transportation and infrastructure projects, streetscapes, and art installations. In her career, Karen has worked on numerous award-winning houses and interior renovation projects for corporate, cultural, and institutional clients.

Karen led award-winning projects for the Kitchen Theatre Company, (1.5m); East 180th Street Station and Morris Park Headhouse and Plaza Restoration, ($45m.), and the expansion of the Bridgehampton Library ($6m.). Other recognized projects are the Asia Society and Museum, East Side Access, Fulton Transit Center, Oberlin Environmental Studies Center, and Nike, the Netherlands.

As Associate Partner-in-Charge with Voorsanger, Karen directed a 14-member studio on the design of the Newark Liberty International Airport, Terminal B Masterplan, and renovation encompassing 12 subprojects ($200m.); her architectural design leadership for East Side Accessʼ Public Space ($2B.) Karen skillfully addressed the challenges of integrating GCTʼs beaux-arts language with that of emerging technologies and successfully led the intensely complex engineering coordination required to minimize interference with legacy GCT infrastructure.

Prior to starting her own practice, Karen held senior design positions with Lee Harris Pomeroy Architects, William McDonough + Partners, Associate Partner with Voorsanger Architects, and Associate with Prentice, Chan, and Ohlhausen.

Teaching

1993 -1996 Instructor, University of Pennsylvania

1993 - 1996 Guest Critic, Drexel University, Anne Tyng Studio

1999 Instructor, Rome Studio Abroad Temple University, Rome

2010 Guest Critic, Pratt Institute

Affiliations

American Institute of Architects NY Chapter I Cultural Facilities Committee

American Association of University Women

United States Green Building Council

Fourth Arts Block I E. 4th St. Cultural District Founding Board Member I 2008 - 2012

New York State Council on the Arts Grantee Technical Advisor

Kips Bay Neighborhood Association Executive Director

ECOLOGICAL BALANCE

Karen’s research in alternative energy sources and ecological balance began as an undergraduate student in California, where she designed her first solar-powered house. Trained in Europe in the mid-90s, Karen’s first “green” buildings were designed for Nike International, the Netherlands, while with William McDonough + Partners and in collaboration with a Dutch development/architectural team (The Dutch have pursued comprehensive policies of resilience and sustainability for hundreds of years.) The author of Cradle to Cradle and many seminal books on sustainability, William McDonough was Dean of Architecture at the University of Virginia and founded the Institute for Sustainability when Karen joined his architectural practice. For the Oberlin Environmental Studies

Center at Oberlin College, a sustainable laboratory for the environmental studies program under Dr. David Orr, Karen researched sustainable materials and strategies and was a key designer. Since its completion in 2001, the building has been an influential case study model for high-performance buildings. Believing all research informs the way we design and as an extension the way we live, Karen incorporates past research into her current investigations. While living in the Kalahari Desert and traveling extensively throughout Africa, she came to understand the urgency of both making and supporting sustainable communities. Her first hand-collecting of “healing” stories from San storytellers guides her steady commitment today to ethical design.