Kara Bartelt

I went to MIT to be either a computer scientist or an architect. Architecture quickly won out as it seemed the most tangible way of bettering the environment, but I've worked between technology and design ever since.

After MIT I was on to Yale for my masters. Thereafter I designed skyscrapers and concert halls with Cesar Pelli until moving to California in 2002 to run residential and commercial projects. In 2004, I founded Lettuce Office, and within a year was promoted to a tenure track professor at the USC School of Architecture. At USC and running my firm for the last eight years, I have worked to push the limitations of the AEC industry to impact change and quickly advance our environment.

With Lettuce, I partnered with Occidental College and Martifer Solar to build a 1.1 MW urban hillside solar array. Before joining the team, the project was at a standstill because of contentions between Occidental and the engineers. As a design strategist, Lettuce proposed an engineering design solution that addressed all the board’s concerns and reframed the project not as a utility -- but as a community amenity and work of art.

Concurrently, I directed Advanced Design Studios at USC that focused on adapting new clean energy technologies into our cities. I saw this as the most efficient way to move the built environment forward; and it quickly became clear to me that clean energy was the largest change agent that will evolve our cities. Architecture is often too concerned with the avant-garde and not with solving problems and finding viable, collaborative solutions.

As of 2013 I am working to find new solutions to our world’s cities and its infrastructure to support the better evolution of our environment. I'm a designer by trade but I'm not out to merely design. I'm out to solve problems. Design, clean energy, research, engineering and technological advancements are the solutions to bettering our world.