Lisa Gelfand

Experience

1. Principal

   Gelfand Partners Architects

   Jan 1997 — Present

   Lisa Gelfand, FAIA, LEED AP, is founding and managing principal of Gelfand Partners Architects in San Francisco, and a principal of Roesling Nakamura Terada Architects in San Diego. Both practices are leaders in sustainable, energy-efficient design, affordable and special needs housing, educational facilities, and commercial projects. At Gelfand Partners, Ms. Gelfand has designed or supervised the design of over 34 education projects, as well as over 2500 units of affordable housing created primarily through the adaptive reuse of existing or historic buildings. Ms. Gelfand is an innovator in education and affordable housing. She is the architect of the Kelly Cullen Community, 174 units of new housing for the formerly homeless and a wellness center in an adaptive reuse of the landmark Central YMCA in San Francisco. She was also the architect for the Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS) demonstration project, Georgina Blach Intermediate School, in Los Altos. She has completed six more CHPS schools and serves on the CHPS Technical Committee and the Green Committee of the California DSA Advisory Board. Her projects have earned numerous international, national, state, and local design awards. Ms. Gelfand is the principal author of Sustainable School Architecture, Wiley and Sons, 2010, and coauthor of the forthcoming Wiley title Sustainable Renovation. She has practiced in New York and Utah and has also held faculty appointments in architecture and/or landscape architecture in New Zealand, at the University of California at Davis and the University of Utah. She regularly lectures and publishes in a variety of academic and professional settings. She received her M.Arch. from Yale School of Architecture in 1978.

Education

• Yale University

  BA, M.Arch., Architecture

  1972 — 1978

Skills

• Senior Living
• Entitlements
• Architectural Design
• Adaptive Reuse
• Campus Planning
• Aia
• Masterplanning
• Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (Leed)
• Submittals
• Interior Design
• Architectural Drawings
• Renovation
• Programming
• Design Research
• Historic Preservation
• Educational Facilities
• Landscape Architecture
• Mixed-Use
• Sustainable Design
• Community Design
• Social Housing
• Green Building
• Revit
• Tenant Improvement
• Affordable Housing
• Special Needs Housing
• Sketchup
• Feasibility Studies
• Leed
• Rhino
• Urban Design
• Construction Drawings
• Site Planning
• Comprehensive Planning
• Space Planning