Keynote: Lawrence Scarpa, FAIA

Why do we remember buildings, locations and experiences? Even a place visited in our childhood can conjure emotions that make an impact on us through the memories they create. Brooks and Scarpa will explain the creative process that aspires to make a lasting impression out of even a brief encounter. 

Beauty is deeply intertwined with human values, social structures, and individual well-being. Its relevance can be seen in the way societies and cultures celebrate, pursue, and define beauty.  It impacts almost every aspect of life from art and architecture to daily routines and social norms.

Beauty is the promise of happiness.” Happiness is one of our fundamental human needs and Beauty fulfills that promise.  Buildings that we admire are ultimately those which, in a variety of ways, extol the values we think worthwhile. Whether through material innovation , form, colors or service to society, qualities such as friendliness, kindness, subtlety, strength and intelligence are part of what we believe are beautiful. . Our sense of beauty and our understanding of the nature of what is good are intertwined and inseparable.

Brooks and Scarpa’s work is deeply rooted in conditions of the everyday, and works with our perception and preconceptions to allow us to see things in new ways. They do this, not by escaping the restrictions of practice, but by looking, questioning and reworking the very process of design and building, rethinking the way things normally get done – with material, form, construction, even financing –– and to subsequently redefine it to cull out it’s latent potentials – making the “ordinary extraordinary.”

Lawrence Scarpa, FAIA

Brooks + Scarpa Architects 

Lawrence Scarpa, FAIA, is the recipient of the 2022 National American Institute of Architects Gold Medal, the institutes highest honor. He has garnered international acclaim for the creative use of conventional materials in unique and unexpected ways. He is also considered a pioneer in the field of sustainable design having completed the first LEED certified project in the United States in 2002.  BTW – He has received 6 National AIA COTE Top Ten Green Building awards, more than any firm in the USA. His firm Brooks + Scarpa is the recipient of multiple international awards including 29 National AIA Honor Awards, the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum Award in Architecture and the AIA National Firm Award.  He is also the recipient of lifetime achievement awards from Interior Design Magazine and the AIA California Council.  Mr. Scarpa has taught at the university level for more than two decades and is currently on the faculty at the University of Southern California.

He is also the recipients of the $4.5 mil Housing Innovation Challenge Grant awarded by Los Angeles County for their innovative and scalable solutions to homelessness.  He has co-founded of the A+D Museum in Los Angeles, The Affordable Housing Design Leadership Institute, Livable Places, Inc.; a nonprofit development and public policy organization dedicated to building mixed-use housing and to help develop more sustainable and livable communities. He has also been featured on the Oprah Winfrey show with Leonardo DiCaprio.

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