Stephen Kieran

Architect

Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake are partners at KieranTimberlake, an architecture firm internationally recognized for its beautifully crafted, high-performance buildings that are holistically integrated to a site, program, and people. The firm has received over 160 design citations including the 2008 Architecture Firm Award from the American Institute of Architects, and the 2010 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Architecture from the Smithsonian Institution. They were inaugural recipients of the prestigious Benjamin Latrobe Fellowship for architectural design research from the AIA College fellows in 2001, and Rome Prize Fellows in 1980 and 1982, respectively. They are co-authors of six books on architecture, including the influential book refabricating architecture, and Alluvium: Dhaka, Bangladesh in the Crossroads of Water, a new book forthcoming in 2015.

Kieran and Timberlake currently co-teach a Design-Research Laboratory at University of Pennsylvania School of Design. Their studio is an advanced, interdisciplinary format that enrols students from Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning departments. For the past eight years, students have undertaken a deep investigation of Dhaka, Bangladesh, studying diverse topics related to water, shelter, human health, delta ecology, agriculture, transportation, and more. They seek to define problems and articulate solutions in the form of design and planning interventions to promote positive change.