Douglas P. Kallfelz has been promoted to partner at Providence-based Donald Powers Architects Inc. He joined the firm in 2003, after nearly a decade working as an architect in Boston and New York, and has been instrumental in streamlining the firm’s operations, elevating the level of design and service and helping to shape the firm’s strategic vision. Kallfelz has a B.A. in architecture from Syracuse University and an M.A. in design studies from Harvard University.
PBN: What projects are you looking forward to pursuing?
KALLFELZ: One project is an affordable artist community here in Rhode Island. This unique neighborhood has been designed as a community of small, sustainable cottages, studios and galleries that combine with a working farm to create a rural neighborhood centered on community agriculture and the arts. Anchored by a new wind turbine that provides the electrical needs for much of the development, the cottages employ sustainable materials and ultra high-efficiency heating systems to create a … “green,” rural neighborhood that could be a national model for sustainable affordable housing. The second project, just north of Seattle, is a small development … where all 100 of the seaside cottages designed by our firm will be LEED-rated homes.
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PBN: How have architects played a role in bringing green building practices to the national stage?
KALLFELZ: I think architects and planners are working very hard to reshape thinking about the ways that we live and build that is beginning to have resonance across many disciplines and with the greater public. Organizations such as the Congress for the New Urbanism and the American Institute of Architects (AIA) are instrumental in coordinating and organizing a clear message. … While we, as individual architects, have the power to change our environment one building at a time, through collective effort we can have a greater affect on the broad discussion of sustainability and green building practices.
PBN: What does your perfect city look like?
KALLFELZ: A great city to me is one that is able to nurture and sustain a diverse range of people, cultures, histories and experiences. It is a place grounded in the collective wisdom of history but ambitious and energetic enough to imagine the future. It’s really about a place that I can imagine a great number of people wanting to call home. •
To learn more about Donald Powers Architects Inc., a Providence-based firm founded in 2000, visit www.DonaldPowersArchitects.com.
