FF – Distance Edition: Leers Weinzapfel Associates

The League’s FF – Distance Edition events are informal online studio visits offering a behind-the-scenes look at leading design practices.
This season’s events feature practices navigating the legacies and possibilities of American infrastructure, from ecological systems and transit hubs to community facilities and social networks.

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Leers Weinzapfel Associates was founded in Boston in 1982 by Andrea P. Leers and Jane Weinzapfel. Led by a diverse team, the practice works at the juncture of architecture, landscape, urban design, and infrastructure. In the words of the firm, “we bring inventiveness to dramatically complex conditions and we meet challenges with uncommon design clarity, refinement, and intelligence.”

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Completed projects include:
• Harvard District Energy Facility, a 56,000-square-foot facility that provides chilled water, hot water, and electricity to Harvard’s new Allston campus
• Ohio University Chilled Water Plant, a facility that provides 7,500 tons of chilled water capacity to the school’s campus
• John W. Olver Design Building, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, the first and largest cross-laminated timber academic building in the United States.

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Current and upcoming projects include:
• Williams College Davis Center, a comprehensively redesigned multipurpose space for the college’s student minority coalition
• Woodland Wonders Nature Preschool, a new preschool facility located within Auburn, Alabama’s Kreher Preserve and Nature Center
• Innovation Center, a mass timber structure for a transit-oriented live-work campus adjacent to Boston’s public Revere Beach.

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The program will be moderated by Mark Lamster. Lamster is the architecture critic of the Dallas Morning News, as well as a Loeb Fellow and faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

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