Karen Van Lengen, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Architecture, has been selected to serve on the 2012 National AIA Small Project Awards jury. 

Van Lengen is an internationally recognized, distinguished architect and educator. In her role as Dean of the School of Architecture from 1999-2009 she championed cross-disciplinary education and research to address the complex environmental and cultural challenges that she dubbed The Architecture of Urgent Matters. 

She began her professional career at I M Pei & Partners where she became the first female Design Associate, before founding her own firm in New York City in 1987. Her current research focuses on the exploration of sound and communication as an integral part of the new public realm and its evolving democratic culture. She has won numerous design awards, competitions and honors, including a Fulbright Fellowship in Rome, Fellowship in the American Institute of Architects and the winner of the Amerika Gedenkbibliotek Competition in Berlin.

Van Lengen received her B.A. from Vassar College, cum laude with departmental honors in Psychology, followed by a MArch from Columbia University, where she received the William Kinne Travelling Fellowship and the American Association of University Women Fellowship.

This is the eighth annual Small Project Award Program presented by the Small Project Practitioners Knowledge Community to recognize small project practitioners for the high quality of their work and to promote excellence in small project design. This Award Program strives to raise public awareness of the value and design excellence that architects bring to projects, no matter the limits of size and scope.