Leers Weinzapfel Architects:
Women of the Year
Pizza and Collaboration
Collaboration is woven into the LWA ethic. “All our architects work in one big room,” notes Stevenson. “We have regular gatherings — like our bi-weekly design lunch for the whole office. We order pizza, someone pins up a project, and everyone offers comments. We get great ideas back.”
Three projects illustrate what the talented LWA team can do.
Smith College Fitness Center
The Olin Fitness Center at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, came about when the school set out to make physical fitness more accessible and appealing. “The idea was to create a space where students would want to work out,” explains Stevenson. The firm came up with a simple-seeming solution that addressed myriad complexities: Build a structure to connect two existing facilities, the 1927 Scott Gym and the 1970 Ainsworth Gym.
The resulting fitness center is a glass-walled beauty that corrects previous traffic-flow issues between the buildings, offers a defining central hall, houses state-of-the-art exercise equipment, saves energy costs and, above all, is a magnet for students. “It’s lit up at night,” says Stevenson. “They come to work out — and to see and be seen.”
Cambridge School Performing Arts Center
A different challenge inspired the Mugar Center for the Performing Arts at the Cambridge School of Weston, Massachusetts. “For such an artsy school,” comments Stevenson, “their old theater was unacceptable.” The assignment: on a tight budget, design classroom, performance and support spaces for theater, music and dance, and create a modern showcase — but don’t overwhelm the scale of existing one- and two-story buildings.
“To do everything they wanted it had to be big,” explains Stevenson. “But it had to fit in, too.” LWA’s award-winning design neatly leveraged the steep slope of the site into the rake of the theater. “From the quad you see a one-and-a-half story building. But from the back it’s a three-and-a-half story building.” The elegant facility, which houses a 350-seat flexible proscenium/thrust stage as well as a black box experimental theater, draws students to its lobby amphitheater, where they gather to practice their stagecraft.
University of Pennsylvania Chiller Plant
The University of Pennsylvania Gateway Complex chilled-water plant is the type of project LWA made its early reputation on: a functional workhorse that, thanks to excellent design, became an architecturally interesting building. Not only has it won multiple awards; it remains one of the firm's most popular and often-cited works.
It came about as Penn faced increasing demands for chilled water to cool new buildings. Since the new plant’s site was in a highly visible location along the Schuylkill River, the University held a design competition. LWA proposed that, as Stevenson puts it, “instead of trying to hide something ugly, we would turn it into an architectural statement, and do that within a landscape that included a new varsity baseball field.”
The plant features a continuous, perforated stainless steel wall wrapped in a fluid, elliptical form. “The ellipse nestles in a green field, within grassy berms, gracefully enclosing this very large structure,” describes Stevenson. “Depending on the time of day and the light, the building can seem opaque or transparent. We spent a lot of time on the lighting, because we knew early on it would be a major factor in the design. And the plant has become a gateway to the campus.”
“It’s About Time”
Jane Weinzapfel pauses to reflect on the milestone moment. “It’s thrilling to have both our work and our firm recognized by the 2007 AIA Firm Award,” she says. “Architecture is a very collaborative art, and this award recognizes all the talented people who have contributed to the ambitious quality of our work.”
And, Weinzapfel continues, “It also recognizes the importance of a good working environment where young professionals can continue to develop their careers while balancing work, family and professional growth. As the first woman-founded firm to win the AIA Firm Award, we hope it will serve as encouragement to the many young women who now represent about half of all new architecture graduates.”
Her co-founding partner Andrea Leers concurs, noting simply, “We could also say, it’s about time.”
Weinzapfel is fired up to continue making beautiful architecture. “We hope to make this award an inspiration for some of our best work to emerge in the future,” she adds. “We love being able to make a positive difference in our clients’ futures through their use of the spaces, buildings and landscapes we have created together.”
