Lawrence Scarpa

Early in his career, Scarpa completed many National AIA award winning office projects.[6]

In 2004, the Architectural League of New York selected Scarpa as an "Emerging Voice" in architecture.[7] His work has been exhibited at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, MOCA and at numerous other venues worldwide. He was featured in Newsweek[8] and in a segment on The Oprah Winfrey Show. In 2009, Interior Design Magazine honored him with their Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2010, his firm Pugh + Scarpa received the American Institute of Architects Firm Award, the highest award given to an architectural firm. He was also elected to the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows in 2010. In 2014 Brooks + Scarpa were the recipients of the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum Award in Architecture.[9] In 2015, Scarpa received the American Institute of Architects California Council (AIACC) Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2018 he received the National American Institute of Architects Collaborative Achievement Award and the Gold Medal in Architecture from the American Institute of Architects Los Angeles Chapter. He is the recipients of the 2022 American Institute of Architects Gold Medal.[10] As the institutes highest award, the Gold Medal honors an individual or pair whose significant body of work has had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture.

Scarpa's project Colorado Court in Santa Monica was the first multi-family housing project in the USA to be LEED Certified.[11][12] His Solar umbrella house in Venice, California has been named by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) as one of their Top Ten Green Projects.[13] Both Colorado Court and the Solar Umbrella House and Step Up on 5th are the only projects in the history of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) to win a National AIA Design Award, an AIA "COTE" Committee on the Environment "Top Ten Green Building" Award and a National AIA special interest award for a single project.[13][14]

Scarpa has held teaching positions at several universities for more than two decades and is currently on the faculty at the University of Southern California. In 2020, he was the William F. Stern Endowed Visiting Professor at the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design, University of Houston, the Paul Helmle Fellow at California Polytechnic University and the Regnier Visiting Professor at Kansas State University. He was the 2014 Barber McMurry Professor at the University of Tennessee. He was the 2012 visiting professor at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and in 2011 was the John Jerde Distinguished Professor at The University of Southern California. He was also the 2009 E. Fay Jones Distinguished Chair in Architecture at the University of Arkansas, the 2008 Ruth and James Moore Visiting Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, the 2007 Eliel Saarinen Distinguished Professor in Architecture at the Alfred Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning, University of Michigan Ann Arbor, the 2004 Howard Friedman Fellow in Architecture at the University of California Berkeley. He has also taught at the University of California Los Angeles, Southern California Institute of Architecture, University of Florida as well as several other higher education institutions.[15]