STELLA LEE
R.A., C.P.H.C.
Stella Lee is an independent practitioner based in Berlin, Germany and co-founder and former principal of Bureau V, an award-winning architecture and design practice based in New York City. She is on the Board of Trustees of Diversity in Architecture. She is a registered architect in the State of New York, and a Certified Passive House Consultant through the Passive House Institute US.
During her time at Bureau V, the studio emerged from its roots as an interdisciplinary design practice specializing in performance and installations, to completing major building projects in National Sawdust, a critically acclaimed chamber music hall in Brooklyn, and a ground-up mixed use development, also located in Brooklyn, NY. Architectural Digest wrote, “When it comes to being creative, eclectic, and ambitious, there is perhaps no architecture firm more exciting than Manhattan-based firm Bureau V.” On National Sawdust, The New York Times hailed it as “the city’s most vital new-music hall”, and The Village Voice wrote, “nothing quite like it exists in New York City, or anywhere else in the world, and it must be seen (and heard) to be believed.”
Lee received her Master of Architecture and is the recipient of the Lowenfish Memorial Prize from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Columbia University, Columbia College, is also where she received her Bachelor Arts, where she was admitted as a John Jay Scholar. Over the years, Lee has instructed design studios at Columbia University, Syracuse University, the University of Kentucky and has given numerous presentations on her studio’s work.
Prior to founding her studio, Lee worked at Asymptote Architecture as a lead designer and project manager where she designed the Alessi Flagship Store in New York City, named Travel+Leisure’s best retail space the year it opened. Lee also led and designed their proposal for the Guggenheim’s Saadiyat Island pavilions, WBC Busan Towers, and a high-rise mixed use tower for the Dubai International Financial Center in Dubai, UAE. Previously, she had also worked at Eisenman Architects and Richard Meier & Partners as a graphic designer and communications assistant, respectively.
Lee wrote an Op-Ed for The New York Times in 2018 in the wake of the #metoo movement, addressing the imperative for institutions supporting the profession to step up in support of victims of sexual harassment and gender discrimination at the workplace.
Lee lives and works in Berlin, Germany.