Leadership

Paul Lukez FAIA LEED AP

Principal and Owner of PLA/PLASES

Paul Lukez has always had a passion for sustainable design. During his undergraduate years, he was a student of a renowned solar-design specialist, Prof. Fuller Moore of Miami University. In the early 1980s, Paul collaborated with a University of Cincinnati professor on passive design houses in Cincinnati. As both a student and a professor at MIT, Paul conducted urban transformation studies that were based on the reuse of the existing fabric of historic cities to maximize their utility and embedded energy.

In 2003, Paul’s sustainable design efforts became prominent in the portfolio of his firm, Paul Lukez Architecture (PLA). While he was teaching in China, PLA was hired to design a cutting-edge 50,000 SF sustainable pavilion in Hangzhou. Serving as a showcase for its sponsors and clients, the project highlighted recent technological advances in sustainable concepts and technologies. PLA went on to design several medium- and large-scale projects in China, including proposals for high-rises in Xiamen and amenity-rich environments in Shaoxing’s lake district (3 million SF). Many of these and other sustainable designs by PLA received numerous awards and media recognitions.

More recently, PLA has developed new prototypes for green living in the U.S. This includes both built and prototypical designs for Net Zero Energy projects and Energy Plus homes that generate sufficient energy to power both a house and a car and store ample energy reserves in batteries. The firm is scaling up these projects to meet the demands of multi-unit housing complexes and multi-use developments for both American and international locations.

This concentrated effort on sustainable design has led to the launching of a separate in-house studio within PLA that focuses on sustainable design projects of all sizes and applications: Paul Lukez Architecture Sustainable Environment Studio (PLASES).