Erik G. L'HEUREUX (Dr)
DEAN'S CHAIR ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
Department of Architecture, College of Design and Engineering, National University of Singapore, 4 Architecture Drive, Singapore 117566.
- TEL:
- 6515 3477
- EMAIL:
- akierik@nus.edu.sg
Erik G. L'Heureux (PhD) FAIA, LEED AP BD+C integrates design education and academic leadership with Research-by-Design, creating sustainable strategies for the "Architecture of Equatorial Envelopes" in hot, wet, and dense "Equatorial Cities" to meet the challenges of a warming world.
As an architect and designer, L'Heureux uses simple monolithic forms and delicate veils to calibrate architecture to the hot air of the urban equator in delightful and surprising ways. L'Heureux has completed over 40 projects including his "simple" series (A Simple Headquarters, A Simple Terrace House, A Simple Factory Building) and such built work as An Equatorial School of Architecture, Yusof Ishak House, Hut House, Stereoscopic House and 1000 Singapores have been peer reviewed and awarded by the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction, the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the Society of American Registered Architects (SARA), the INDE Design Awards, the World Architecture Festival (WAF), a President of Singapore Design Award, and featured in nearly 100 professional and design periodicals, including Oculus, Icon, InDesign, Design+Architecture, Architecture Asia, and Archinesia among others.
L'Heureux's pioneering integration of creative practice and academic research into mid-20th-century equatorial architecture and its relationship with the urban environment, climate and atmosphere in Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Ghana and Brazil earned him a Harvard University's Graduate School of Design Wheelwright Prize (2015-2017).
L'Heureux has published Renovating Carbon (2023), Drawing Climate (2021), and the monograph Deep Veils (2014) with notable publishers, including Birkhäuser and ORO Editions. Many are now in the academic collections of Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Stanford, Yale, University of California, Berkeley, Cambridge University, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and elsewhere. In addition to his designs, books, and monographs, L'Heureux is also the oft-published author and co-author of numerous articles and papers, including "Climatic Design and Its Others" (2020) in the peer-reviewed Journal of Architectural Education that received the Best Article Award, Scholarship of Design in 2021.
L'Heureux received his PhD from the School of Architecture and Urban Design at RMIT University, where he was awarded an RMIT prize for research excellence in design. A graduate of Princeton University, he received his Master of Architecture as a recipient of the Suzanne K. Underwood Design Award. He received his B.A. in Architecture as a James W. Fitzgibbon Scholar at Washington University in St Louis. He was later honored with a Distinguished Alumni Award in 2007. L'Heureux is a registered architect in the USA and Singapore, NCARB certified, and a LEED-accredited Building Design and Construction professional. L'Heureux was elevated to the prestigious College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects in 2020 in recognition of his contributions "to advance the science and art of planning and building by advancing the standards of architectural education, training, and practice."
AIA New York State, Design Merit Award 2020, Design Award of Excellence; National, Society of American Registered Architects, USA, 2020; Design Honor Award, SARA New York, 2021 PHOTOGRAPHY BY Finbarr Fallon, sg ARCHITECT: TEAM DESIGN ARCHITECTS
SDE 1 & 3. INDE Design Award, Design of The Year Award 2021; AIA New York State, Unbuilt Award 2020; Chicago Atheneum Design Award, 2021, Special Mention, The Architecture Prize 2021. PHOTOGRAPHY BY Finbarr Fallon, SG ARCHITECT: CPG Consultants
WAF DESIGN AWARD CATEGORY WINNER 2013; FUTURARC GREEN LEADERSHIP AWARD, 2013. AIA NEW YORK CITY DESIGN MERIT AWARD 2012. AIA NEW YORK STATE DESIGN MERIT AWARD, Unbuilt 2010. Photography by Kevin Lau, ASSOCIATED CONSULTANT CREDITS: sg Architect QP: AYRA ARCHITECTS, HS ENGINEERING CONSULTANTS, K LAU CONSULTANTS
Society of American Registered Architects, Design Award of Honor, New York, 2017 Photography by Kevin Scott, ASSOCIATED CONSULTANT CREDITS: sg Architect QP: AKDA ARCHITECTS
Society of American Registered Architects, Design Merit Award, New York, 2016 Photography by Khoo Guo Jie, ASSOCIATED CONSULTANT CREDITS: sg Architect QP: AKDA ARCHITECTS
1st Place Award, Design Competition, Chengdu, China, 2011. Built. PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHENGDU SKY PHOTOGRAPHY LTD, ASSOCIATED CONSULTANT CREDITS: LDI BIAODING ARCHITECTURE DESIGN COMPANY
1000 Singapores, Venice Biennale, national Pavilion 2010; 1000 Singapores, Cite de L’Architecture, paris, 2015; 1000 Singapores, national Design Centre, Singapore 2016; Cosmopolitan Atmospheres, Seoul Biennale for Architecture and Urbanism, 2017; Hot Air, Seoul Biennale for Architecture and Urbanism, 2019.
Drawing Climate, Birkhauser, 2021; Deep Veils, ORO, 2014; Seoul Biennale Blue Prints (Chapter), 2019; Renovating Carbon, Oro, 2022; 1000 Singapores, A model of the compact city, SIA 2010; 1000 Singapores: 8 Points of the Compact City, Design Singapore, 2015. (Left to Right)
Jury chair K. Michael Hays, associate dean of academic affairs at the Harvard GSD, said in a release. “L’Heureux is an example of an architect with a strong practice who has developed a serious intellectual project that relates organically to his own work. His proposal is not just about technology and efficiency, but deals with the politicization of ecologies and economies in a complicated region and architecture’s complicity in much larger issues.” Jury member Preston Scott Cohen the Gerald M. McCue Professor in Architecture and Director of the Master in Architecture II Program at the Harvard GSD said: “We have learned that architecture is at its most didactic and revelatory when it is confronting extreme conditions. Extremes prompt us to invent, to be innovative. They demand ingenuity. And this is the territory that Erik L’Heureux is interested in. The extremes that are the focus of his study are not just some esoteric exception or abstract anomaly, but they constitute a big swath of the world that is developing rapidly today, with far-reaching consequences.”