Lori Ferriss '09, M.Eng '10, Director of Sustainability and Climate Action at Goody Clancy in Boston, received the 2022 AIA Young Architects Award. Her profile is reposted below.
Lori Ferriss, AIA
For Lori Ferriss, AIA, building reuse is a significant form of climate action. Leveraging her multidisciplinary expertise and policy engagement, Ferriss continues to advance civic and professional communities across the world. Her far-reaching work has expanded the role of architects while simultaneously elevating building reuse as a prime way to combat climate change. Ferriss is a true citizen architect, and her contributions to the profession and the health of our planet are deeply meaningful.
When she was growing up in Southern Louisiana, Ferriss was steeped in a culture defined by its history and understanding of the power of the natural world. That upbringing made Ferriss want to explore the many ways the built environment helps form our identities. Her young career has been marked by respect and admiration for historic places and a driving passion for sustainable design. The intersection of cultural and environmental stewardship drives her practice, positioning Ferriss as an important educator and advocate.
Before joining Boston’s Goody Clancy, Ferriss was a structural engineer and building material conservator, contributing to architecturally significant works both historic and new. Her work has spanned the Harvard Art Museums with Renzo Piano Building Workshop to the restoration of I.M. Pei’s Christian Science Center tower. Those early experiences have given Ferriss an uncanny ability to assess the promise of existing buildings while she continues to hone her analytical skills in life cycle assessments.
Today, Ferriss is Goody Clancy’s director of sustainability and climate action, leading the firm’s research and project initiatives that advance design excellence. In addition, she plays leadership roles on major projects at educational institutions that are renewing their heritage campuses and embracing climate-action goals. As a result of her leadership, each of the firm’s projects is evaluated through whole building life cycle assessment, and the data help inform design decisions. That data is also shared widely throughout the professional community.
“Lori has made it a personal mission to build bridges between historic preservation, structural engineering, and architecture for climate action,” Carl Elefante, FAIA, AIA president emeritus, wrote in a letter supporting Ferriss’ nomination for the Young Architect’s Award. “I can say with authority that, despite her relative youth, Lori is one of the most knowledgeable professionals, nationally and even internationally, on building-sector climate change principles and practices.”
“Lori has made it a personal mission to build bridges between historic preservation, structural engineering, and architecture for climate action.”
Through her keen understanding of policy development and her technical insight, Ferriss has been a catalyst for international initiatives that mobilize the design and heritage communities to support climate action. In addition to serving on the International Council on Monuments and Sites’ Scientific Committee on Environmental Sustainability and Climate Change, she helped found the Zero Net Carbon Collaboration for Existing Historic Buildings in 2017. Additionally, in 2020, the city of Boston invited Ferriss to serve on its carbon-mitigation policy Technical Advisory Group.
Ferriss believes that, as an architect, she is obligated to leverage her work to pursue a more just and sustainable world. To that end, she assumed leadership of COTE Advocacy and serves as the chief liaison between the committee and AIA staff and volunteers. In her role at COTE, Ferriss also advocates for greater equity in design and led the development of new criteria for the COTE Top Ten Awards’ Design for Equitable Communities.
“Lori is both an architect and an engineer and is meaningfully engaged in organizations around architecture, historic preservation, and engineering,” wrote Kira Gould, Allied AIA, a member of the AIA COTE Advisory Group, in a letter supporting Ferriss’ nomination. “Rather than just hat-switching from one to the next, Lori serves as a leader in all three and an important conduit among these realms. This is exceedingly important in the 2020s, when the urgency of the climate crisis demands that we un-silo our learnings and collaborate to accelerate climate action.”
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