board of directors + board of advisors
Mohamed Sharif, President
designer, writer
With 12 years of experience including teaching and running his own design practice, Mohamed Sharif is currently an Associate at Koning Eizenberg Architecture in Santa Monica. In addition to working on projects, Mohamed collaborates closely with the Principals to expand the practice's ability to pursue research and documentation on strategic issues affecting contemporary design and implementation.
Over the past 10 years, Mohamed has edited and published regularly, both in the United States and in the United Kingdom, and is currently a contributing editor with arq (architectural research quarterly) published by Cambridge University Press.
Mohamed received both his Master's and Bachelor's degree in Architecture from the Scott Sutherland School of Architecture in Aberdeen, Scotland. In the third year of his undergraduate studies he spent one year at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago as an exchange student. Prior to moving to Los Angeles in 1997, he spent three years in a design collaborative in Aberdeen, Scotland where he also taught at his alma mater. He was a faculty member in the Architecture Departments at California State Polytechnic University Pomona from 2001 to 2004; Woodbury University in 2006; and is currently a visiting Senior Lecturer at Otis College of Art and Design.
Mohamed served as co-chair of the AIA Los Angeles Awards and Exhibitions Commitee in 2004 and 2005. Board member since 2005.
Margaret Griffin, Secretary
architect [griffin enright architects]
Margaret Griffin, A.I.A. is a co-founder and Principal of the Los Angeles-based, Griffin Enright Architects, a collaborative practice that yields creative, forward-thinking designs. Their work combines innovation and experimentation with a desire to explore cultural complexities relative to the built environment. Griffin Enright Architects has been published extensively locally, nationally and internationally, and has received numerous awards for design excellence including, local and state AIA Awards and most recently the 2006 American Architecture Award from the Chicago Athenaeum. In addition to guiding an emergent practice, Margaret is an educator with more than fourteen years of experience teaching at universities including SCI-Arc (Southern California Institute of Architecture), USC, UCLA and Syracuse University. She earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Syracuse University and a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Virginia. She was granted the John Dinkeloo Traveling Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome to investigate the relationship between urban and landforms; a subject she continues to examine in her architectural practice. Board member since 2007.
Esmeralda Ward, Treasurer
architectural designer [osborn]
Esmeralda joined Osborn Architects in 2006. She received her Masters of Architecture SCI-Arc in 2005, and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from The University of Virginia in 1999. Following her Bachelor’s degree, Esmeralda worked at Bohlin Cywinski Jackson in Pittsburgh for 2 years. At BCJ, she worked on 2 new educational buildings for the University of California – San Diego, as well as projects in the Pittsburgh area. She then spent a year as a studio assistant at the American Academy in Rome prior to beginning her Masters’ at SCI-Arc. Her thesis at SCI-Arc entitled “Memory Space” investigated the potential of a site’s memory and `accidental’ beauty to inform architectural design. While at SCI-Arc, Esmeralda ran the student lecture series and worked for the LA Forum as their administrator. Board member since 2007.
Ann-Marie Burke
architect
Sara Daleiden
artist, curator, adminstrator
Sara Daleiden is an artist, curator and administrator who focuses on participant experience through the creation of identity systems and interventions within the city. She is a core member of the collective the Los Angeles Urban Rangers, www.laurbanrangers.org, which offers site-specific, interpretive services such as the 2006 Interstate Road Trip Specialist, generated for High Desert Test Sites and Socrates Sculpture Park, which was chosen by Miwon Kwon for the Americans for the Arts Public Art Network 2007 Year in Review, and the 2007 Malibu Public Beaches. Sara has worked as a coordinator with the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House, artist Suzanne Lacy, Cliff Garten Studios, and the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. She is completing her Masters in Public Art Studies at the University of Southern California (USC).
Todd Gannon
architect, educator, writer
A graduate of the Ohio State University, Todd Gannon teaches at Otis College of Art and Design and is a project architect with Kovac Architects in Los Angeles. Previously, he taught architectural theory and design at Ohio State and UCLA and worked with Acock Associates Architects in Columbus, Ohio. As series editor of Source Books in Architecture, he has published books on the work of Morphosis, Bernard Tschumi, UN Studio, Steven Holl, Mack Scogin/Merrill Elam, Zaha Hadid, and on the MoMA exhibition “Light Construction.” His essays have appeared in Log, Loud Paper, Dialogue, and elsewhere. He is currently pursuing a doctoral degree at UCLA that focuses on the British architectural collaborative Archigram and the emergence of collective practices in the 1960s. Board member since 2007.
Greg Goldin
writer
Greg Goldin is the architecture critic at Los Angeles Magazine, and a writer on urban affairs and design. He contributes to the Los Angeles Times, L.A. Weekly, and The Architect's Newspaper. Board member since 2006.
Daniel Herman
architect [DMJM Design, chung-herman], writer
Daniel Herman is an architect in Los Angeles. He is currently a project architect at DMJM Design, where he is overseeing mixed-use projects in Hollywood and Houston. He has previously worked in the offices of Frederick Fisher in LA and Skidmore Owings & Merrill in New York. He maintains an independent practice, Chung/Herman (with partner Linda Chung) which focuses on residential projects. He has written on architecture for Artforum, Architecture, Interiors, and Metropolis. He contributed seven essays to the Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping (Taschen, 2001), among them "Three-Ring Circus," "Jerde Transfer," "High Architecture" and "Mall," and one essay—“Mall Over”—to the book Topos Space (Akademie der Kunste—Berlin, 2005). Educated at Columbia (BA, 1992) and Harvard (MArch, 1998), he has taught at USC and Harvard University’s summer program and has been a guest critic at USC, UCLA, Sci-Arc, Art Center, Otis and Arizona State. He is a licensed architect in California. Board member since 2004.
Ted Kane
architect, writer, photographer [polarinertia.com]
Ted Kane is a Licensed architect and a designer at Morphosis. He holds a Bachelors of Architecture from the University of Kentucky and a Masters of Architecture from UCLA. Ted is the founder and editor of Polar Inertia, a journal devoted to urban and nomadic research (www.polarinertia.com). He is also a writer and photographer focusing on the urban condition, urban systems, and the occasional taco truck. Board member since 2006.
Jason Kerwin
architect [oKB]
Jason Kerwin is actively engaged within the architectural community through involvement with local academic institutions, professional organizations, and once as a staff member at one of LA’s only architectural book stores, Form Zero.
Studying under Ben Nicholson at IIT, his work has been published in AD and Detlef Mertin’s In The Presence of Mies. Upon leaving Chicago, Jason joined the London office of lab to work on a number of competitions within Europe and Australia. On coming to Los Angeles, he worked at Koning Eizenberg on a number of award winning projects before returning to graduate work. Most recently, he edited an issue of the Design and Technology Report Series, Innovations in Structures, published by Harvard Graduate School of Design.
He has been an invited guest critic at Cal Poly Pomona, Woodbury University, IIT, and Harvard University. In addition to working as an assistant teaching position under Tony Fretton, Adam Caruso, and Peter St. John at Harvard, Jason has lead studios at Boston Architectural Center and at the GSD’s summer Career Discovery Program.
Jason received his Bachelor of Architecture from Illinois Institute of Technology and graduated With Distinction from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design with his Master of Architecture degree. He is working as a founding partner and licensed architect in the architecture/design/construction firm, Office of Kerwin Bleet in Los Angeles. Board member since 2007.
Gustavo LeClerc
Gloria Lee
Principal, SwiftLeeOffice [swiftleeoffice.com]
A native of South Korea, Gloria is a founding partner of SwiftLeeOffice (SLO) based in Los Angeles. She received her Masters of Architecture from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from UC Berkeley. In between, she spent a year backpacking around the world, an experience that cemented her interest in architecture as a cultural and social practice. Today, her work at SLO continues to question and expand the role of architecture as a mediator of social change that engages people with their communities through the built environment and improves quality of life.
Gloria has received recognition for her work from the AIA, The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and as a recipient of the Oberdick Fellowship at the University of Michigan’s College of Urban Planning and Architecture. Gloria currently serves on the board of the Korean American Scholarship Foundation, and was formerly a member of Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council. She has taught at Sci-Arc, USC, and Harvard University’s summer program and has been a guest critic at USC, UCLA, SCI-Arc, Otis and Woodbury. Board member since 2007.
Rick Miller
geographer [UCLA], photographer [research]
Rick Miller is conducting PhD research on how nomads at the suburban edge of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia settle the vernacular landscape and build domestic architecture, influenced by nomadic culture (guided by Professor Denis Cosgrove, UCLA Department of Geography). Previously, Rick worked on photography and documentation of built heritage in the Field Projects section of the Getty Conservation Institute. He has also served as a designer in several Los Angeles architecture firms since taking an MArch degree in 1997 from SCI-Arc. Board member since 2007.
Emily Morishita
graphic designer
As an exhibition designer at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Emily has designed exhibitions such as Reflecting Antiquity: Modern Glass Inspired by Ancient Rome, Oudry’s Painted Menagerie, and Art, Anti-Art, Non-Art: Experimentations in the Public Sphere in Postwar Japan. Her work at the Getty continues outside of the gallery space into areas of signage and wayfinding. She has worked with various Los Angeles firms, including Green Dragon Office, Ph.D, and Sussman/Prejza. Emily received her Bachelor’s Degree in Media Arts from Emerson College and a Master’s Degree in Graphic Design from CalArts.
Martha Read
architectural designer and writer
Martha Read is a Los Angeles based architectural designer and writer. She currently works at Gehry Partners, and has also worked independently on projects in Southern California, as well as for firms including Chassay Last Architects in London, Fisher Friedman Associates in San Francisco, and Eric Owen Moss Architects in Culver City. She has contributed articles to the Daily Telegraph, Evening Standard and Times Literary Supplement in Britain, and most recently to Volume #13 (Archis) magazine in the US. Her work was part of the Represent exhibition at the Pacific Design Center (2005) and her writing on Black Rock City, Nevada will be part of an exhibition Occasional Cities, Post-it City, and Other Forms of Temporality at the CCCB (Centro de Cultura Contemporanea de Barcelona) in 2008. From 2003 to 2007 she was on the faculty at SCI-Arc, where she also edited for the SCI-Arc Press. She holds Masters degrees in Literature (French and German) from Oxford University and in Architecture from the University of Westminster in London
Sameena Sitabkhan
architectural designer
Sameena Sitabkhan is currently a designer at a studio in the Frogtown area of Los Angeles, working on a range of projects from LEED certified commercial buildings to Cat Boarding Houses. Her experience includes project management for the LA Housing department focusing on the construction of affordable housing. She has been a guest instructor at Art Center/ College of Design in Pasadena, community design studio, and curated the Frogtown Artwalk in 2006. Sameena holds a Master's Degree in Architecture from SCI-Arc and an Bachelor's in Urban Planning from UCSD. Board member since 2007.
Francisca Stephan
Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter, AIA
architect
Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter is an architect, educator, and design consultant specializing in the experimental architectural use of glass.
She established her own practice in 1999. Completed projects include The Glass Studio, and the Summer Stage - an outdoor demonstration theatre for glassblowing. She and her partner, Roland, established their joint practice [WROAD] in London and are now working in Los Angeles on a number of projects in California.
Ingalill is currently Associate Director and Associate Professor in the Architecture Department at Woodbury University and Lecturer at Yale University. Her past teaching experiences includes SCI-Arc, where she was the Hard-tech Coordinator, the Bartlett, Oxford School of Architecture, and Cornell University.
She was the Project Architect on the Corning Museum of Glass with Smith-Miller + Hawkinson Architects. She also currently collaborates with the structural engineering firm of Dewhurst Macfarlane and Partners where she is Senior Associate of their International Façade Group.
board of advisors
Frances Anderton
Aaron Betsky
Denise Bratton
Meara Daly
Julie Eisenberg
Frank Escher
Hsin-Ming Fung
Eric Garcetti
Brooke Hodge
Alice Kimm
Richard Koshalek
Alan Loomis
Arvind Manocha
Tom Marble
William Menking
Amy Murphy
Merry Norris
Linda Pollari
Marc Rios
Paulette Singley
Warren Techentin
Irene Tsatsos
Kazys Varnelis
Wim de Wit