Karen holds a Masters 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.

Karen founded Lee + Associates Architects pllc in 2006 as a research based studio to focus her professional commitment to building sustainably. In 2010, she founded urban(work)shop, a professional collaborative group focusing on urban design research. Her design approach integrates sustainable principals early in the design process and aims to create buildings, urban interventions and landscapes that respond to contemporary issues of inhabiting the metropolis. Karen’s award-winning design favors clean, modern form making.

Professional Experience:

Karen has 25 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 urban design and infrastructure projects, streetscapes, and residential work.

Urban scale work has included the architectural design leadership for East Side Access’ Public Space, an MTA $6.3 billion train station extension to Grand Central Station, New York City. Karen skillfully addressed the challenges of integrating GCT’s Beaux-Arts language with that of emerging technologies, and the intensely complex engineering coordination required to minimize interference with existing GCT infrastructure.

Previous to starting her own practice, Karen held senior design positions with Lee Harris Pomeroy Architects and William McDonough + Partners, and was an Associate Partner with Voorsanger Architects in New York City. Karen led the restoration of the $34 million East 180th Street Station on the Bronx IRT line and the $6 million expansion of the Bridgehampton Library. As Associate Partner-in-Charge with Voorsanger, Karen directed a 14 member studio on the design of the $200 million Newark Liberty International Airport, Terminal B masterplan and renovation encompassing 12 sub-projects. Other recognized projects include work with the Fulton Transit Center, Oberlin Environmental Center, the Virginia Art Museum, Asia Society, Kitchen Theatre, and numerous award-winning houses and interior renovation projects for corporate, cultural and institutional clients.

Research:

Karen’s current focus is urban; her questions investigate ways of intervention into a dense and complicated urban fabric. Performed for the immediacy of current issues, her work also explores long term adaptations and sustainable infrastructure. Critical to her research is the mapping of local architectural context, broad cultural influence, historical events, perceptual stimuli, natural and social systems, and regulatory requirements that overlap and define a particular place in time.

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-90’s, Karen’s first “green” buildings, were designed for Nike International, the Netherlands, while with William McDonough + Partners. The Netherlands, as is the case with most countries of Western Europe, have pursued comprehensible sustainable policies decades in advance of the US LEED point system. The author of Cradle to Cradle, and many seminal books on sustainability, William McDonough was Dean of Architecture at the University of Virginia and founding the Institute for Sustainability when Karen relocated in mid-90’s to join his architectural practice. Nike was awarded the AIA Award of Excellence, Washington Chapter. For the Loeb 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 2000, the building has been an influential case study model for the energy performance of net zero 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...

Teaching, Awards, and Memberships:

Karen has taught architectural studios at GSFA, University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University, and Temple University in Rome, Italy. Recently, she has been a visiting critic at Pratt Institute of Architecture. Karen’s work has been exhibited at the GSFA and published in periodicals and academic journals including Architecture Week, Building Design and Construction, Environmental Design and Construction, Interiors, Architectural Review, the New York Times Magazine and the Ithaca Journal. Karen has been honored with a number of research fellowships and design awards, including the prestigious American Institute of Architects National Academic Award; the American Institute of Architects Award of Excellence, Washington Chapter; the E. Lewis Dales Traveling Fellowship; the Louis Bockius Traveling Fellowship for two consecutive years, and the Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill Foundation Traveling Fellowship. Karen received the 2007 A.R.T./New York Dewitt Stern Local Hero Award for her architectural work with the not for profit sector, specifically the Riant Theater. In the fall of 2010, her design for the LEED Silver certified Kitchen Theatre won the Town of Ithaca civic “Pride of Ownership Award.”

Karen is an original board member of the Fourth Arts Block or FAB, the East Fourth Street Cultural District.

She is licensed in the State of New York; is a member of the American Institute of Architects, New York Chapter where she is an active member of the Cultural Facilities Committee. Other professional memberships include the Women in Transportation, American Association of University Women, and the United States Green Building Council.