H2M Spotlight: Welcoming Elisabeth Martin, FAIA

Elisabeth Martin, FAIA, will be participating on a panel titled “Concept to Creation: Trends Shaping Construction & Design of Modernized Urban Assets” as part of Bisnow’s New York City State of the Market event on Wednesday, November 19. Visit Bisnow’s website for more information on the panelists and how to register.

H2M recently expanded our team with the hiring of Elisabeth Martin, FAIA, as Practice Leader for Libraries and Interiors in our New York City office. Elisabeth joined H2M after 20-plus years leading project teams in the planning and design of institutional and residential buildings as the principal of MDA Design group Architects & Planners. H2M and MDA had worked closely in the past, including a collaboration on the expansion and transformation of the Oceanside Library in Nassau County, NY, which reopened to the public last fall.

Prior to her work at MDA, Elisabeth spent several years as the NYC Department of Design and Construction’s Library Unit Director — where she oversaw capital construction programs for the New York, Queens, and Brooklyn Public Library systems — as well as nearly a decade managing the Brooklyn Public Library’s capital planning program as Director of Planning, Design, and Facilities.

Elisabeth grew up in New York City, its sprawling urban magnificence inspiring her lifelong passion for design.

“As a child, I enjoyed traveling to my dad’s office in NYC’s Garment District, close to where H2M’s New York City studio is located. Experiencing the changes occurring all around me in the built environment inspired an early love of design and my choice to study architecture,” she says. “Joining my long-time partners in projects at H2M’s New York City office has been a wonderful opportunity to expand the role we serve together on transformative projects that serve the public good.”

Elisabeth would go on to receive a Bachelor of Arts in Design of the Environment from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master of Architecture from the Yale University School of Architecture, with a year of graduate fellowship study in Venice, Italy. Her formal education helped instill in her a passion for learning and a deep commitment to mentoring students of design. She is the co-chair of the Yale School of Architecture Scholarship Fund and has taught courses in architecture, interior design, and planning at esteemed schools such as the School of Visual Arts, New York City College of Technology, and Harvard Graduate School of Design.

“Teaching is an incredibly rewarding way of giving back to our profession by dedicating ourselves to mentoring students studying architecture, planning, and interior design. And the bonus is, as we mentor our students, we learn equally from their conceptual and creative insights!”

As a New York native, Elisabeth has seen her city evolve over the decades, something that has helped her learn to anticipate changing design trends and the complex needs of builders and their projects. Throughout her career, sustainability and the renewal of urban assets have been a staple of her work. The results speak for themselves and can be found in projects such as the sustainable expansion of the Oceanside Library, the adaptive reuse of a vacant, hurricane-damaged structure into the Allie Mae Branch Library, and the renewal of existing brownstones, townhouses, and penthouses into spaces serving modern lifetimes throughout New York City.

“We design by reimagining the possibilities of each program and site, developing a design language that demonstrates how thoughtful planning, architecture and interior design can truly elevate the human experience. Each project keeps sustainability in mind, but there’s a lot of flexibility in that mindset. Sustainable decision-making could involve something as simple as the choice of materials, use of fair-trade products, or designing to maximize natural light. It could also be something more robust, such as the repurposing of an existing underused structure, or, at an even greater scale, creating a building with an actively sustainable infrastructure and systems. Each of these, whether small scale or larger, help reduce the environmental impact of development and maximize the potential of the limited available land in New York City.”

Over the course of her career, Martin has held leadership positions in the American Library Association, American Institute of Architects (AIA), and the Center for Architecture. In 2002, she received the AIA Public Architect Award, and 2017, the Jury of Fellows of the AIA named her to its College of Fellows, an honor held by only three percent of the organization’s 100,000-plus members. Elisabeth also currently serves as one of 20 elected members to the International Federation of Library Association’s Library Design Section (IFLA).

“I’ve been fortunate to belong to a vibrant and creative community of architects that support one another and the profession as a whole. It’s an incredible honor just to work alongside so many talented, committed, and passionate architects and interior designers.”