Lisa Gelfand

Lisa Gelfand, FAIA, LEED AP, is the founding and managing principal of Gelfand Partners Architects in San Francisco, California, and a principal of Roesling Nakamura Terada Architects in San Diego, California. Both practices are leaders and innovators in sustainable energy-efficient design, community centers, affordable and special needs housing, educational facilities, and commercial projects. At Gelfand Partners she has designed or supervised the design of over 34 education projects, as well as over 2500 units of affordable housing.

Lisa was the architect of one of the first Hope VI family public housing replacements in the country, the 193-unit Yerba Buena Plaza East in San Francisco and was the architect for the Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS) demonstration project, Georgina Blach Intermediate School in Los Altos, California. She has completed eight more CHPS schools and serves on the CHPS Technical Committee and the Green Committee of the California Division of the State Architect Advisory Board. Her schools have earned international, national, state, and local sustainability awards as well as general design awards. She has also earned a historic preservation award for an affordable housing change of use of historic Tanforan Cottage (1854), the oldest existing residential structure in San Francisco's Mission district.

Lisa has practiced in New York and Utah and has also taught architecture and landscape architecture in New Zealand, at the University of California Davis and the University of Utah. She regularly lectures and publishes in a variety of academic and professional settings. She received her Master of Architecture degree from Yale University School of Architecture in 1978.