biography:

Christoph Kapeller was a founding partner of Snøhetta, one of the most prominent architectural firms in the world, after winning the First Prize in the international competition for the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt.  During the course of the project, Christoph spent 9 years in Egypt overseeing the design and construction of this world renowned $ 200 million project.

 

By 2002, Christoph relocated to Los Angeles to pair European design sensibility with the growing sustainable movement and natural beauty of California.  In his vast portfolio he has worked on numerous project types ranging from urban design, residential, hospitality, art and commercial projects. His contributions range from conceptual aspects of design and development and professional project execution to cultivating strong relationships with clients. 

 

Over the years, CK Architecture has won numerous prizes and awards in international design competitions such as, the Aga Khan Award for architecture and finalist at the Aomori Northern Housing Complex competition in Aomori, Japan judged by Tadao Ando and Jean Nouvel. Others include a third prize at a master plan competition in Holte- Stukenbrock, Germany and honorable mentions in the Malama Learning Center competition, Hawaii; and the Urban Habitats competition in Charlottesville, Virginia.

 

In addition to his professional practice, Christoph Kapeller has lectured, written and published a number of critical articles, and was a member of the design faculty at the University of Southern California (USC) School of Architecture from 2002 to 2012. In his spare time, Christoph is an enthusiast of photography, a craft he practices to complement and enrich his professional career as an architect. Christoph received his Dipl. Ing. for Architecture in Graz, Austria and his Master of Architecture at the University of Southern California. He has been a LEED accredited professional since 2006 and is a registered architect in California and Austria.

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firm profile:

CK Architecture, lead by Christoph Kapeller, is an internationally celebrated design practice based in Los Angeles dedicated to improving the quality of life through socially responsible, inspirational and technologically advanced design interventions.

 

CK Architecture is a design-oriented firm of relatively small size that benefits their

clients by guaranteeing intensive participation of the founding principal in all stages of the work with the capacity to accomplish the results of much larger firms through strategic alliances developed during twenty years of practice. It is CK Architecture’s expressed mission to define architecture as a vehicle that delivers world-class design solutions that fully satisfy the client’s aspirations. CK Architecture was founded on the belief that the attitude, experience and attention brought to each design challenge is equally important regardless of its scope and that the solution should be equally satisfying at humanistic, functional, technical and economic levels.

 

At the urban scale, CK Architecture’s efforts benefit from the multi-cultural experience of Christoph Kapeller in Europe, Scandinavia, the Middle East and the United States. At CK Architecture we believe in a multi-disciplinary urban design approach in collaborations including planners, landscape architects, artists, sustainability engineers and other specialty consultants.

 

Over the last thirty years, principal Christoph Kapeller, AIA has developed design and building expertise in places as diverse as Norway, Europe, Egypt and the United States. The work of firm principal Christoph Kapeller, AIA, has been widely recognized for its iconic power and capacity to provide profound spatial experiences.

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approach:

CK-Architecture was established on the shared conviction that the immense challenges facing the urban environment in our century can only be faced through close collaboration and integration of many disciplines. Christoph Kapeller particularly enjoys the challenge of working with diverse constituencies in building a working consensus. An inclusive process that creatively engages all stakeholders to sensitively address concerns and aspirations. This is conceived as an exploration for intervention in the built environment that embraces the entire scope and variety of scales, from urban design to the more intimate scale of an individual building details. CK-Architecture eschews signature design solutions and extreme formalism in favor of highly customized, inspirational, technologically creative, environmentally and socially responsible and fully integrated design solutions. These design solutions are driven by the project requirements and it’s unique circumstances and informed and tested by the following values:

 

• Research based design process

• Building concept informed by the purpose of the facility

• Urban design and siting that responds to contextual opportunities

• Flexibility, adaptability and open-plan design

• Transparency

• Technology to accommodate unique program concerns and requirements

• Sustainability

• Balanced management approach

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