John Friedman Alice Kimm Architects (JFAK) is an American architecture firm founded in 1996 in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

USA.

History

JFAK's architectural practice was founded by husband-and-wife team, John Friedman and Alice Kimm. Friedman has a B.S. in Architecture from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

(MIT) and a Master of Architecture from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. He also earned a Master of Arts degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

, where he was California’s Newton Tatum Scholar. Kimm was born and raised in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

and spent her high school years in

Seoul Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) as stated iArticle 103 ...

. Kimm has a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

and a

Master of Architecture The “Master of Architecture”(M.Arch or MArch) or a “Bachelor of Architecture” is a professional degree in architecture, qualifying the graduate to move through the various stages of professional accreditation (internship, exams) that res ...

from

. JFAK's work has been widely recognized. They received a Responsible Disruptors Award fro
Metropolis Magazine
in 2022 for their Open Source Homelessness Initiative (OSHI). In 2004, Friedman and Kimm were named

Architectural League Emerging Voices Emerging Voices is an invited, annual competition organized by the Architectural League of New York for North American firms and individuals with distinct design voices and significant bodies of realized work. List of Emerging Voices 2021 20 ...

by the

Architectural League of New York The Architectural League of New York is a non-profit organization "for creative and intellectual work in architecture, urbanism, and related disciplines". The league dates from 1881, when Cass Gilbert organized meetings at the Salmagundi Club for ...

. Their work has been noted in The

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

, The Architect's Newspaper,

LAist Gothamist LLC is the operator, or in some cases franchisor, of eight city-centric websites that focused on news, events, food, culture, and other local coverage. It was founded in 2003 by Jake Dobkin and Jen Chung. In March 2017, Joe Ricketts, ...

Curbed LA ''Curbed'' is an American real estate and urban design website founded as a blog by Lockhart Steele in 2006. The full website, founded in 2010, featured sub-pages dedicated to specific real estate markets and metropolitan areas across the Unit ...

, and Arch Daily.

Notable projects

In 2021, JFAK opened the Navig8 Council District 8 Homeless Navigation Center, which has proven indispensable to the local community. That same year, they contributed a public art project, Listen In, to the United Way of Greater LA. In 2016, JFAK completed a 144,000 square-foot collegiate recreation facility, the Roberts Pavilion, at

Claremont McKenna College Claremont McKenna College (CMC) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Claremont, California. It has a curricular emphasis on government, economics, public affairs, finance, and internat ...

, as well as the La Kretz Innovation Campus (LKIC), a 3.2-acre campus located in a former furniture and fabric warehouse in the Los Angeles’ Arts District for entrepreneurs, engineers, and policymakers to innovate and support LA’s green economy. The building of the

LA Cleantech Incubator LA Cleantech Incubator (LACI) is the City of Los Angeles's official cleantech business incubator established to accelerate the commercialization of clean technology and job creation in the Los Angeles region. LACI's staff of entrepreneurs, market ...

(LACI) is an adaptive reuse of a 61,000 square-foot warehouse that includes

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is the largest municipal utility in the United States with 8,100 megawatts of electric generating capacity (2021-2022) and delivering an average of 435 million gallons of water per day to more ...

(LADWP) facilities, offices, conference rooms, labs, prototyping workshops, and an event space. The project has been published in Metropolis Magazine,

Wallpaper Wallpaper is a material used in interior decoration to decorate the interior walls of domestic and public buildings. It is usually sold in rolls and is applied onto a wall using wallpaper paste. Wallpapers can come plain as "lining paper" (so t ...

, and

Dezeen ''Dezeen'' is an online architecture, interiors and design magazine based in London, with offices in Hoxton and also previously in New York City. History ''Dezeen'' was launched in London by Marcus Fairs at the end of November 2006. Its New Yo ...

References

External links

* {{authority control American companies established in 1996 Architecture firms based in California 1996 establishments in California Companies based in Los Angeles