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Biography

Karen Bausman is an accomplished licensed architect and founding principal of Karen Bausman + Associates, a New York City-based architecture firm. Karen is renowned for establishing an undeniable creative connection with her sterling list of clients in the public and private sectors, for whom she has executed projects ranging from building designs to interiors and site-specific installations.

Among her most notable New York commissions are ultra-elegant headquarters for clients Warner Bros. Records (Interior of the Year) and Elektra Entertainment – award-winning environments that are designed to celebrate the iconoclastic artist and that serve as important incubators in New York’s highly competitive cultural scene. Her Performance Theater for Los Angeles won the Progressive Architecture Award from Architecture magazine. This commission and other works that push the boundaries of structural and visual poetry formed the basis of Karen Bausman: Supermodels, a solo exhibition of her building designs and working methods at Harvard University.

Under her design leadership, her firm in 2010 and again in 2012 was awarded a multiyear Design Excellence contract as part of New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s ambitious effort to bring new ideas, ecological soundness, and technology to the design of city-financed buildings in New York.

Karen has made significant contributions to education. She has been the Eliot Noyes Visiting Design Critic in Architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor at Yale University’s School of Art and Architecture, the only American woman to hold both distinguished design chairs. She was a faculty member of Columbia University’s School of Architecture’s Advanced Architectural Design Studio. Her applied research into biological and natural structures during this time underlies her dynamic building designs and is featured in INDEX Architecture, published by MIT Press.

An active member of the New York design community, Karen has participated as a panelist and lecturer for the Architectural League, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, a fellow of the American Academy in Rome and the AIA New York Chapter. She has also been a guest lecturer and design critic throughout the United States and abroad – including at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and the General Services Administration where she serves on the GSA’s National Register of Design Excellence Peer Professionals. She is a featured commentator on NYC-TV’s Secrets in the Sky: The Towers of Gotham, the Emmy-winning program currently airing on PBS stations across the United States.

Today, Karen is considered a design leader in the field of contemporary building design with an international reputation for developing 21st century environments that are creative and authentic to their site and purpose. Her work has won acclaim by the world’s most prominent media including The New York Times newspaper and magazine, Architectural Record, and A+U (Japan), which published a 60-page monograph of her work.

Karen Bausman received her professional degree in architecture from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art 1982. She received the President’s Citation for Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Architecture from her alma mater in 1994. She was awarded the Rome Prize at a White House ceremony in the same year.

ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS

2009  Visiting Distinguished Professor, City College School of Architecture, Urban Design and Landscape Architecture
2001  Eliot Noyes Chair, Harvard University Graduate School of Design
1998  Visiting Professor of Architecture, The Cooper Union School of Architecture
1994  Eero Saarinen Chair, Yale University School of Art and Architecture
1990-2004 Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture, Columbia University GSAPP

FELLOWSHIPS, HONORS, AWARDS

2012 Design Excellence Firm, City of New York
2010 Design Excellence Firm, City of New York
2000 Election to National Register of Peer Professionals, GSA, Washington D.C.
1998 Progressive Architecture Award for Performance Theater, Architecture magazine
1996 Fellow in Architecture, New York Foundation for the Arts
1995 Fellow, American Academy in Rome
1995 Election to 40 Under 40, Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, sponsor
1994 Rome Prize Recipient, American Academy in Rome
1994 Distinguished Alumni Award, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
1993 Nomination, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters