LPA Design Studios receives 2025 AIA Architecture Firm Award

WASHINGTON – Dec. 12, 2024 – The Board of Directors and the Strategic Council of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) today honored LPA Design Studios with the 2025 AIA Architecture Firm Award.  

The annual AIA Architecture Firm Award is the highest honor the AIA bestows on an architecture practice. The award recognizes a firm that has consistently produced distinguished architecture for at least 10 years.

Founded in 1965, LPA has grown to encompass more than 400 employees scattered throughout six studios in California and Texas. The firm’s early work, designing spec offices exclusively for developers with tight constraints, required LPA to use materials wisely and creatively. In the 1980s, as the savings and loan crisis spiraled, LPA broadened its market to include K-12 educational facilities. The firm’s command of the economy has been invaluable for public schools, which often seek profound impact on limited and inflexible budgets. Since then, public schools have grown to represent nearly 50 percent of the firm’s practice. Its excellence in that sector has received six awards from The Committee on Architecture for Education (CAE) and 42 awards from AIA California.

LPA demonstrated its sustainable leadership in 1998 when it designed the nation’s first LEED NC-certified building, the Premier Automotive Group headquarters. In 2004, the firm established new rigorous performance goals that required every project it designed to exceed California’s stringent Title 24 energy-use goals by 25 percent. LPA also wholeheartedly pursued AIA’s 2030 Commitment. It stood alone as the only firm of more than 100 employees to meet the 70 percent energy reduction target in 2018 and 2019 across its portfolio of nearly 12 million square feet.

Projects such as the Environmental Nature Center Campus in Newport Beach, California, demonstrate LPA’s commitment to education and the environment. The 9,000-square-foot nature center was the first LEED Platinum, net-zero energy building in its region when it opened in 2008. A 10,380-square-foot preschool was added in 2019, extending the center’s mission and creating a sustainable facility for nature-based education for young children. Just a few miles away in Irvine, LPA delivered a 25,000-square-foot, LEED Platinum auditorium for Edwards Lifesciences. The net-zero energy space bridges two existing office buildings for the company and serves as both a gathering spot and a dramatic new entryway for the corporate headquarters.

Inside the interdisciplinary firm, a culture of breaking down hierarchies between disciplines and fostering collaboration has blossomed. LPA invests heavily in education across the firm, sparking diversification and the advancement of emerging talent. Today, the staff comprises 46 percent women and 41 percent racial and ethnic minorities. It pursues equity through annual gender pay audits and by supporting its equity, diversity, and inclusion advisory committee in creating open dialogues with employees.

LPA’s commitment to education extends beyond its studio walls and into the communities the firm serves. Its foundation works with elementary school children in underserved districts to ignite an interest in architecture and design. It also offers a program that awards five high school seniors in California and Texas with renewable $5,000 scholarships.

Learn more about LPA’s selection as the 2025 AIA Architecture Firm Award recipient.