Architect Lawrence Scarpa, and the Los Angeles firm that he cofounded with Gwynne Pugh in 1991, Pugh + Scarpa, is renowned for what Scarpa terms making the “ordinary extraordinary." A used ocean shipping container, colored translucent Dixie cups and ping pong balls were some of the materials creatively repurposed in the firm’s early work. Though projects have grown in scope from small-scale boutique interiors to larger commercial projects, multi-family housing, and educational and civic buildings, Pugh + Scarpa has continued to emphasize process rather than product. “We typically design from the inside-out rather than the outside-in, and I have always been influenced by artists who leave something with the visitor," Scarpa said in a 2008 interview with Contract magazine. Digital technologies, new materials, and sustainable design also shape the firm’s approach, resulting in a wide range of forms and material invention.

Over the last eight years Mr. Scarpa’s firm Pugh + Scarpa has received 36 major design awards, notably eleven National AIA Awards, including 2006 and 2003 AIA Committee on the Environment “Top Ten Green Project" awards, 2005 Record Houses, 2003 Record Interiors, 2003 Rudy Bruner Prize, and finalist for the World Habitat Award, one of ten firms selected worldwide. In 2004 The Architectural League of New York selected him as an “Emerging Voice" in architecture. His work was recently exhibited at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. and featured in Newsweek. Pugh + Scarpa is one of 12 firms selected by the Make It Right foundation to design affordable housing in New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina victims.

Born in Rockaway Beach, New York, Scarpa grew up in Florida and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in architecture from the University of Florida. He was influenced by the Sarasota School of Architecture, particularly Paul Rudolph, with whom he worked for two years. Scarpa has taught and lectured at the university level at numerous schools including UCLA, the University of Florida, Mississippi State University and SCI-arc. As the 2009 Fay Jones Visiting Professor at the University of Arkansas, Scarpa is leading a studio that is developing a master plan for the Fayetteville High School campus. He was the 2008 Ruth and Norman Moore Visiting Professor at Washington University, the 2007 Eliel Saarinen Visiting Professor at the Alfred Taubman College of Architecture at the University of Michigan, the 2005 University of Michigan Max Fisher Visiting Fellow, and the 2004 Freidman Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley.  He is a co-founder of Livable Places, Inc.; a nonprofit development and public policy organization dedicated to building mixed-use housing on under-utilized and problematic parcels of land. Livable Places has received over  $1,000,000.00 in grants from the Irvine Foundation, Bank of America, the Fannie Mae Foundation and a host of other public and private institutions.

In addition to practicing and teaching architecture, Scarpa paints and sculpts; his work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions.