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About Studio Pali Fekete Architects - Wallis Annenberg Center Performing Arts

About Studio Pali Fekete architects [SPF:a] Founded in 1988, Studio Pali Fekete architects (www.spfa.com) is a Culver City based multi-disciplinary architecture firm. Renowned for their award-winning team and highly sophisticated technical workshop, the studio's projects range in size and scope from custom residences to large-scale institutional and commercial projects. The studio prides itself on a high level of hands-on principal to client involvement and is driven by their belief that architecture is a worthwhile and basic human act that has the potential to transform our world into a better place. The studio’s approach adheres to the tenets that constant ingenuity and inventiveness - grounded in knowledge and admiration for the tried and true - are the hallmarks of excellent and elegant architecture.

ZOLTAN E. PALI, FAIA
Founder / Design Principal
Zoltan E. Pali founded Studio Pali Fekete architects [aka SPF:a] with partner Judit M. Fekete in 1988 with the mission of generating architecture that fuses forces of site, program, budget, nature, and culture.  Although they have become proficient in working with historically designated buildings, their approach is decidedly modern – having been mentored by the LA modernist and original LA12 designee, Jerrold E. Lomax, FAIA, an associate of Craig Ellwood.  In 2005, Zoltan was inducted as one of the youngest members of the AIA’s College of Fellows.

Their restoration work on the 1928 Hollywood Pantages Theatre, received the LABC Award for Historic Preservation and the Preservation Award from the Los Angeles Conservancy.  Pali’s firm is also known for their work renovating the popular 1933 Greek Theatre and Gibson Amphitheatre.  For his work as the executive architect on the Getty Villa Museum in Malibu, a $300 Million dollar renovation and expansion project that included the new Getty Conservation Institute, the Fleischmann Amphitheatre, the Villa Auditorium and restoration of the original Villa Museum and Getty Ranch House, Pali received the AIA Los Angeles Presidential Award.  The firm’s own mixed use MODAA building received the LABC Award, an AIA Los Angeles Award, AIA California Council Award and the Southern California Development Forum’s Award for Community Enrichment.  For the design of the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts – a site that involves connecting a new state-of-the-art theatre with an adaptive reuse of a historic 1934 WPA post office building, Pali garnered an AIA Los Angeles “Next LA”, LA Business Council award for “Best Civic Project” and just recently a California Preservation Award.

Pali’s smallest project may even be his most significant – he won the AIA National Honor Award for Architecture for the design of the Somis Hay Barn – a small horse barn that reinvents the prototype, and which has been published around the globe.  Pali has designed several modernist single-family homes winning numerous regional AIA awards, House of the Year awards and other accolades.  He was also named an Emerging Voice by the New York Architectural League.
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