Brooks + Scarpa is a collective of architects, designers and creative thinkers dedicated to enhancing the human experience. Honored with the 2014 Smithsonian Cooper- Hewitt National Design Award, the firm is a multi-disciplinary practice that includes architecture, landscape architecture, planning, environmental design, materials research, graphic, furniture and interior design services that produces innovative, sustainable iconic buildings and urban environments.

Awarded the 2010 State of California and National American Institute of Architecture Firm Award for nineteen years of consistently exemplary work seamlessly blending architecture, art and craft, Brooks + Scarpa has also garnered international acclaim for the creative use of materials in unique and unexpected ways. The firm has also been recognized for pioneering more holistic approaches to delivering award winning environmentally responsive designs.

While the Brooks + Scarpa team practices architecture with an extremely rigorous and exacting methodology, incorporating cross-discipline research and digital technologies, we remain open-minded, so that our work can adapt throughout the dynamic process of making places for people. Each project is designed to address our client’s needs, budget and specific site conditions incorporating important global issues such as sustainability and digital fabrication.

History – Founded in 1991 as Pugh + Scarpa, the firm changed its name in 2010 to reflect the current leadership under Angela Brooks, FAIA and Lawrence Scarpa, FAIA. Today, Brooks + Scarpa is a 25 person interdisciplinary practice involved in rigorous design and research that yields innovative, iconic buildings and urban environments.

Our Work - Over the twenty five years of practice Brooks + Scarpa has competed nearly every project type ranging from single-family homes to multi-family housing, affordable housing, commercial, institutional, educational and governmental buildings. While many firms specialize in a single project type Brooks + Scarpa has developed design expertise regardless of building type. We are known for ‘special’ and ‘unique’ buildings of various types. We have developed design expertise, a methodology, regardless of building type. Approaching every project with fresh eyes, allows us to bring the best critical thinking to the table, often resulting in unique and appropriately suited solutions to old problems.

Process - Our practice is grounded in the belief that clients direct participation in our design process results in more meaningful and thoughtful buildings. Our process is open and fosters active client participation and the ability to make choices as the project develops. We seek, obtain and develop critical knowledge early in the concept design phase. This collaborative approach to design serves as the basis for all Brooks + Scarpa projects.

Environmental Stewardship – Embedded in our way of working is a respect for our natural environment and fragile ecosystems. By integrating state-of-the-art eco-friendly design and science, our work is at the leading edge of sustainability best practices and innovation.

Design Excellence - Brooks + Scarpa has a proven track record at delivering design excellence that inspires and engages people, incorporating creativity, originality, functionality and technology. These core values allow us to challenge convention and explore new ways of building thru innovative use of materials, structures and technical systems to create spaces people love.

Recognition – Ranked 7th Overall top Architecture Firm in the USA by Architect Magazine and 333rd worldwide by Design Intelligence, Brooks + Scarpa is considered one the premier design firms in architecture, having been recognized with some of the most prestigious honors in the profession.

With more than one hundred significant national and international awards and thousands of publications awards include; the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award, National and State of California American Institute of Architects Firm Award, The Lifetime Achievement Award from AIA California Council and Interior Design Magazine, Architectural Record Houses, Architectural Record Interiors, The World Habitat Award and The Rudy Brunner Prize.

The firm’s work has been exhibited worldwide including venues such as The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, The National Building Museum, Portland Museum of Art, the Gwanju Bienale and has also appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Read Less

The work of Lawrence Scarpa has redefined the role of the architect to produce some of the most remarkable and exploratory work today. He does this, not by escaping the restrictions of practice, but by looking, questioning and reworking the very process of design and building. Each project appears as an opportunity to rethink the way things normally get done – with material, form, construction, even financing – and to subsequently redefine it to cull out to latent potentials – as Lawrence aptly describes: making the “ordinary extraordinary.” This produces entirely inventive work; work that is quite difficult to categorize. It is environmentally sustainable, but not ‘sustainable design;’ it employs new materials, digital practices and technologies, but is not ‘tech or digital;’ it is socially and community conscious, but not politically correct. Rather, it is deeply rooted in conditions of the everyday, and works with our perception and preconceptions to allow us to see things in new ways.

Mr. Scarpa has received more than 100 major design awards including twenty National AIA Awards, 2014 Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, 2005 Record Houses, 2003 Record Interiors, 2003 Rudy Bruner Prize, five AIA COTE “Top Ten Green Building” Awards and was a finalist for the World Habitat Award, one of ten firms selected worldwide. In 2004 The Architectural League of New York selected him as an “Emerging Voice” in architecture. His work has been exhibited internationally including the National Building Museum in Washington, DC. He has been Featured in NEWSWEEK and appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show. In 2009 Interior Design Magazine honored him with their Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2010, his firm Brooks + Scarpa was awarded the National and State of California Architecture Firm Award from the American Institute of Architects.

He has taught and lectured at the university level at numerous schools. He is currently on the faculty at the University of Southern California. He was also the 2012 Visiting Professor at Harvard Graduate School of Design, the 2011 and 2012 John Jerde Visiting Professor at the University of Southern California, the 2010 Ivan Smith Eminent Visiting Professor at the University of Florida, 2009 E. Fay Jones Visiting Professor at the University of Arkansas, the 2008 Ruth and James Moore Visiting Professor at Washington University, the 2007 Eliel Saarinen Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan, 2005 Max Fisher Visiting Professor at Taubman College of Architecture at the University of Michigan, 2004 Freidman Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley. He is a co-founder of Livable Places, Inc.; a nonprofit development and public policy organization dedicated to building mixed-use housing on under-utilized and problematic parcels of land. Most recently he co-founded the Affordable Housing Design Leadership Institute (AHDLI) to help develop more sustainable and livable communities.
Read Less

As the Managing Principal at Brooks + Scarpa Angela Brooks, FAIA supervises all of the office operations. She acts as the office central hub directing project flow and tempo. Through an exacting operations approach she describes with the phrase “Accuracy, Neatness and Concentration”. Angela ensures that each project remains on time and on budget by enforcing project deadlines, coordinating communications between all parties, and rigorously tracking finances. Her hands-on involvement runs from schematic design through completion of construction and post-occupancy.

Angela is a recognized leader in the field of environmental and sustainable design and construction. She has pioneered more holistic ways of delivering affordable housing, sustainable architecture and advances in social equity. She has been practicing architecture since 1991 and is responsible for firm development in the area of housing and policy, leading the firm’s sustainable initiatives and overall management.

She is a powerful advocate for the rich, multivalent impact of good design. Ms. Brooks sees architecture as an instrument for the triple bottom line and the delivery vehicle for space that encourages occupants to flourish. She has pursued this philosophy through two tracks since her master’s thesis almost twenty-five years ago: executing and enhancing individual structures while formulating and advancing ideas that promote larger societal wellbeing through policy organizations.

Ms. Brooks’ was a peer reviewer for Global Green USA’s book Blueprint for Greening Affordable Housing and was featured in the book Women in Green: Voices of Sustainable Design for her policy work with Livable Places and on Fuller Lofts, a sustainable mixed-use project designed to be a catalyst for neighborhood revitalization.

Ms. Brooks was a co-founder and past President of Livable Places, Inc., a non-profit development company dedicated to building sustainable mixed-use housing in the city of Los Angeles on under-utilized and problematic parcels of land as a reaction against Southern California’s suburban sprawl. She has served as an advisor to the National Endowment of the Arts, Mayors Institute on City Design and currently, she sits on the Advisory Board of Solar Santa Monica, a program whose mission is to achieve net zero energy imports by 2020 for the City of Santa Monica; a model that can be replicated throughout the country.
Read Less