People

Katherine Lambert, AIA

Katherine Lambert, AIA

Katherine Lambert, AIA, IIDA, is a founding principal of Metropolitan Architectural Practice (MAP), San Francisco, CA. The mutable environment of architecture, design, sustainable practices, and community engagement has formed the unique nexus of her research and praxis. Her emphasis has embraced the cross disciplinary realm afforded by the intersection of architectural and design practices with digital and media practices.

She has lead several large scale key projects in the residential, commercial and public sectors.

As truly reflective of the site specificities afforded by California, these projects ranged from urban spaces to ranchscapes. As a principal, she led several key projects ranging from the renovation of a landmark Willis Polk, 18,000 Sq. ft. city residence, to the internationally acclaimed (TARC) Tenderloin Aids Resource Center, to large scale commercial spaces, such as Quokka Sports, Clear Ink, and Own & P Advertising, to historic landmark retail spaces such as 1 Grant Ave., SF, to the design and development of the 300 acre sustainable agricultural Thornton Ranch in Sonoma, CA, to numerous contemporary and modernist residences throughout California, to a number of pro-bono projects such as the nascent and internationally acclaimed Tenderloin Aids Resource Center (TARC ), San Francisco, CA.

Lambert is an Associate Professor of Architecture and chaired the Interior Architecture program at California College of the Arts for 2005-12. Her own graduate studies in architecture were at UCLA, and she has been a visiting critic and design fellow at such institutions as UC- Berkeley, INCITE Research Institute, and Royal College of Art and Goldsmith College, University of London. She has served on the Board of Trustees for the San Francisco Art Institute and Theatre Artaud, both in San Francisco. Currently, she serves on the Board of Directors of IIDA and is a co-Vice President for Professional Development.

Today, she continues to advance innovative responses to new projects through an ever-evolving and wide-angle lens of promising approaches to progressive design principles and has continued to design urban, rural and pre-fab architectural projects that advance innovative design research and sustainable building practices.


Christiane Robbins

Christiane Robbins

Christiane Robbins is representative of some of today’s most striking fusions of media director, artist, designer, thinker and practitioner. Her practice spans the disciplines of film, digital media/imaging, visual art, design, and education. Her work as a Professor and Director of USC’s Matrix Program for Digital Media, was instrumental in developing and forecasting current concepts of creative thought and strategies via digital media + cultural practices.

She is a pioneer in digital media, identifying relationships between data visualization, interactivity, spatial and locative-based practices and has significant experience in developing image, narrative and social based practices as successful underpinnings for digital media ventures. Her groups have researched and developed techniques and devised innovative strategies for cross media production. and her projects have been awarded major international research grants and fellowships from research universities such as Stanford University.

Robbins holds to a steadfast principle that media, design, the visual arts and engineering are poised to vitally transform our culture and economy in the 21st century - just as science and technology did in the 20th. Her incisive contributions have engendered a refined design approach reflective of reductive thinking while using technologies to augment and help democratize our increasingly digital world.

Robbins has mapped a unique and influential path throughout her professional career. She is a notable alumni of the California Institute of the Arts School of Film & Video and completed post-graduate studies at Harvard Business School She has taught at various universities, most recently holding the position of Professor at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles & Director of the Matrix Program for Digital Inter-Media, a member of the USC's Norman Lear Center and research fellowships at Stanford University. She has lectured extensively in international conferences and universities, ranging from University of London, the Royal College of Art, the Banff Center to Carnegie Mellon University. And she has served on a number of Board of Directors/Trustees, as well as jurist and panelist for fellowship awards, festival and exhibitions. Her work is found in numerous museum and public collections throughout the world.

Her work been widely recognized, screened and exhibited within mainstream public global realms, as well as in venues on the margins of conventional discursive systems. She emerged in the late 20thc/early 21stc as a noted figure in independent film, video art and new media practices, selected for inclusion in exhibitions and awards such as the recent Gwangju Design Biennale, curated by Ai WeiWei, Moving the Moving Image at the Walker Art Center, the Sundance Producer’s Institute, and the Banff Institute Digital Media/Film Co-Production Award, Banff Coproduction Award Fellows.

These projects and works have consistently been screened/exhibited widely ranging from venues such as MOMA, the Whitney Museum, the New Museum, to the Sao Paolo Biennial, the Rotterdam Film Festival, the Vigo Intl. Film Festival, the Berlin Film Festival, the Banff Center for the Arts, SFMoMA, and the Other Cinema. She was a recipient of a 1992 SFMoMA SECA Award, a 2003-04 City of Los Angeles Award Fellowship, a COLA Award Fellows as well as numerous other international awards, fellowship and grants, including a first place award from Women in Design International.