Karpf Khalili Architects creates architecture that is purposeful. We streamline the design process while staying focused on the project’s vision, drawing on our partners’ complementary skills and expertise. We bring clients into the creative act and design projects that intelligently respond to complex conditions. Our approach allows us to address contemporary issues—such as density, sustainability, and public space—with expediency and insight. We design all building types, and have deep experience with cultural, commercial, residential, and civic work.

Our studio is headed by two professionals with expertise in very different aspects of design, giving our practice dynamism, flexibility, and diversity. Bernhard Karpf brings a body of mature modernist work to the firm. Rooted in rationalism, he has an international portfolio of projects of all typologies and scales, completed over the past three decades. Parsa Khalili is an architect and educator invested in the conceptual domain of architecture, who has cultivated a portfolio of independent research and experimental projects.

With our exceptional capabilities in design and visualization, we can work with clients in real time, accelerating the design process while exploring its possibilities. This disciplined method lets us deliver projects that are efficient and architecturally innovative. United by curiosity, a devotion to quality, and a desire to create spaces that challenge expectations, Bernhard and Parsa founded KKA in 2019.

 
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Bernhard Karpf FAIA is the former Managing Principal of Richard Meier & Partners. His international background and experience provided substantial contributions toward the firm’s global success. Karpf’s work on significant public and private buildings worldwide is grounded in timeless principles of architecture. In his over 30-year career, he developed a distinguished body of modern works of architecture, distinctive for its order and composition, utilization of natural light, meticulous assembly, and site strategies and transformations.

Bernhard Karpf’s work has been published extensively and has received numerous awards from institutions such as the American Institute of Architects, Progressive Architecture, Bund Deutscher Architekten, and the Royal Institute of British Architects. He has been invited to speak at institutions worldwide, among them the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the National Museum in Tbilisi, Georgia, the AIA Convention in Boston, the Preservation Conference in Indiana, the Museo de Arte Carillo Gil in Mexico City, and the Academy for Architectural Culture in Hamburg, Germany

Karpf studied architecture and literature at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, the ETH Zürich, Switzerland, and the Technical University Darmstadt, Germany, where he received his diploma. After being awarded a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) fellowship he continued his education in the Master of Architecture/Urban Design Studio at Cornell University. He is licensed as architect in New York and in Germany. A member of the American Institute of Architects, he was elevated to the College of Fellows in 2018.

 

Parsa Khalili is an architect and educator. Prior to co-founding Karpf Khalili, he established Wazeone, an experimental studio for developing architectural ideas through teaching, writing, competitions, and speculative proposals. Formerly an Associate and the Director of Visualization at Richard Meier & Partners, he has also worked with Diller Scofidio & Renfro, Eisenman Architects, and Coop Himmelb(l)au. He additionally held teaching positions at the Princeton School of Architecture, the Pratt Institute, the Yale School of Architecture, and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.

Parsa was awarded both the George Nelson Fellowship and the William Wirt Winchester Fellowship from Yale University to fund his early academic work and would go on to receive the SOM Prize and a Graham Foundation Grant to further develop his research. He was named as one of Wallpaper Magazine's “Next Generation Designers” and Interview Magazine’s “Next American Architect”. In addition to his design practice, his written work has been published across a variety of art and architecture publications such as Log, Pidign, SAC Journal, and chapters forthcoming in two books by Birkhäuser.

He studied architecture at the Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Architecture de Versailles and went on to graduate Summa Cum Laude from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and received his Masters from the Yale School of Architecture. He is a licensed architect in New York.

 
 

Studio Collaborators

Fabian Lorenz
Mahsa Malek
Nicole Mourad
Deniz Önengüt
Anna Renken
Amalia Rusconi-Clerici
Mousa Sedehi
Nicolas Schlegel