Founder | Omgivning Architecture
Karin has dedicated her career to community building, sustainability and advocacy by embracing adaptive reuse as a powerful means to revitalize our cities. She became a Fellow of the AIA in 2020, (add comma) based on her drive to elevate the architect’s role in urban revitalization by creating a nationally applicable model for the practice of adaptive reuse. Karin founded Omgivning in 2009, and since then, the firm has built a reputation for uncovering potential in underutilized buildings by transforming them into hotels, multifamily housing, offices, restaurants, and bars.
Karin holds a MArch from UCLA.
Courses
The Art of Collaboration & Getting Things Done
This session focuses on how A+D founders and leaders create their own culture with impactful design, and how this is nurtured by design teams, leadership styles, new ways of working, and even, ownership transitions. Join Think-Time Tuesdays host, and SO|arch founder Elisabeth Sporer, AIA CIC for a presentation on design culture that energizes the business of design.
Elisabeth provides an overview of the influencing factors of an office culture from the founder’s values and its impact on client and project selection to the way staff is hired, trained and mentored and how projects are executed in a hybrid work environment. Then Elisabeth is joined in conversation by Los Angeles-based A+D firm leaders Karin Liljegren [Omgvining], Georgina Huljich [P-A-T-T-T-E-R-N-S], Stephanie Ragle [office42], and Monika Haefelfinger [XTEN], who share stories that other founders and leaders of small studios and midsized firms in particular will find useful, on these topics:
- Applied values: Design culture manifested in client selection and project work
- Design teams: Growing the firm
- New ways of working: Collaboration in hybrid mode
- Leadership: Training, mentoring, and ownership transitions
Course expires 03/23/2025