Kennedy & Violich Architecture, Ltd. - KVA

Sheila Kennedy is an American architect, innovator, and educator. She is a Professor of Architecture at MIT and a Co- Founder and Principal of KVA Matx. Designated as one of Fast Company’s emerging Masters of Design, Sheila Kennedy is described as an “insightful and original thinker who is designing new ways of working, learning, leading and innovating”. Sheila has received the Innovator Award from Architectural Record, the Rupp Prize for Distinguished Practitioners, the Innovation Green Grant from the Lemulson Foundation and a MIT Bose Innovation Fellowship.

At KVA, Sheila brings 20 years of professional experience in architectural design. She consults on all design projects. Sheila directs Matx, KVA’s material research division that works with business leaders, cultural institutions, and public agencies to design new applications for renewable materials and resilient ‘soft’ infrastructure for networked cities and urbanizing regions. Kennedy’s design work has been widely published and has been exhibited at the United States Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, at MoMA, the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, the International Rotterdam Biennial, the Vitra Design Museum, and the TED conference in California. Kennedy has been invited to share her work at the United Nations in New York, on National Public Radio, BBC World News, Swedish Television, French Television, CBS Spotlight on Design, The Discovery Channel, CNN Principal Voices, Wired, Elle Magazine, The Economist, and The Wall Street Journal.

As a co-founding Principal at Kennedy & Violich Architecture, Frano Violich has developed an expanded interdisciplinary practice that engages building design, material innovation, digital fabrication, and energy resilience. Recent projects include Hayden Library at MIT, the Global Flora Plant Conservatory at Wellesley College, and the Institute for Data Sciences at the University of Rochester. KVA’s material research division Matx has worked with business leaders, cultural institutions, and public agencies to design and build resilient soft infrastructure in the US, Germany, and France and urbanizing global regions in central Asia, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, India, and Africa. Violich has lectured widely and has taught architectural studios at RISD, Berkeley, UVA, Michigan, and Cornell, and Harvard’s GSD which was documented in the book BRICK: Thick/Thin published in May 2017.