Principal | Kipnis Architecture + Planning
Nathan Kipnis, FAIA, LEED BD+C, is a fellow of The American Institute of Architects. His practice, Kipnis Architecture + Planning, is based in Boulder, CO, and Evanston, IL. His architectural work has centered on sustainable design since attending the University of Colorado in 1979 for its solar design program. He designed his first solar home in Boulder in 1983. He then obtained his Master of Architecture degree from Arizona State University, with an emphasis in Energy Conscious Design.
A founding member of The American Institute of Architects’ 2030 Commitment Working Group in 2009, Mr. Kipnis served as the committee’s national co-chair from 2018 to 2019. He has also served on AIA’s national Sustainability Leadership Group, the Committee on Climate Action and Design Excellence, and was the Sustainability Director on the Executive Committee of the Small Firm Exchange. Mr. Kipnis currently serves on AIA’s national Resilience and Disaster Response Committee.
Mr. Kipnis is the founder of NextHaus Alliance, a premium design/build concept that provides ‘net zero’ sustainable, resilient, and healthy luxury homes that seamlessly merge ‘High Design’ with ‘Low Carbon™’. NextHaus recently completed its first certified Passive House/certified NET ZERO project in Evanston, which has garnered seven local, state, and international design awards to date, including a PHIUS design award in 2025.
Courses
An Introduction to the AIA Framework for Design Excellence
Propel your practice’s success with the AIA Framework for Design Excellence—the defining 10 principles of design excellence in the 21st century. In this introductory course, you will learn the origin, evolution, and significance of each of the framework’s principles and examine how they advance progress toward a zero-carbon, healthy, just, resilient, and equitable built environment. Learn from real-world case studies showcasing successful implementations across diverse firms and project types. Plus, you’ll learn how to navigate the valuable online resources for each of the 10 principles to use in your design process for future projects.
Course expires on 2/04/2027
Back to the Future: Combining Historic Strategies with Modern Technology for Maximized Passive Survivability
In this joint partnership between the Building Performance Knowledge Community (BPKC) and the Resilience and Disaster Response Community (RADR), panelists will review historic cooling, heating, and resilience strategies and discuss how they can be used to amplify and expand the effectiveness of emerging technology for passive survivability and energy efficiency. By designing for aesthetics first, and then using modern HVAC and other solutions to overcome any inefficiencies second, we are doing ourselves, our clients, and our communities a grave disservice.
In the 1999 essay by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien called ‘On Slowness,’ there is a quote from Milan Kundara: “There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting.”
The speed with which we develop new technologies to enhance our building performance increases our forgetting of the basic principles that helped people survive for hundreds of years without air conditioning and ducted heat. Building science and technology continue to evolve and advance in both possibilities for improved outcomes and complexity. The more we learn about vented rainscreens, smart vapor barriers, all in one water resistive barriers and insulation products, the more intricate our detailing becomes. High performance envelopes are exciting and full of promise even with the challenges of coordination and installation execution. Join us for a 60 minute discussion of getting back to basics as a way to further progress in building resilience and passive survivability.
This session was recorded live on July 14, 2026.