Lorcan O’Herlihy, FAIA, is a Keynote Speaker for the 2024 AIA Utah Fall Conference. He will be speaking at 1:30 p.m. We chatted with him about his passions and hopes for the field. The following are excerpts from our conversation.
What is your current passion?
Ever since I was a young architect, the desire to be creative and deeply embedded in the world of ideas is what has kept me going every day. That has never changed over the years, of which I’m forever grateful.
What do you wish you knew when you were a young practitioner?
As a young architect, I was very happy where I was at the time and loved what I was doing. I started studying architecture at University at 16 years old and was thrilled to be engaged with drawings and creating ideas. The one thing I would say to a young architect is to have patience and perseverance. Those are two key elements that resonate with me today, and which I would tell a younger architect. It’s a long journey and you’re learning as you go along, which is so wonderful about architecture.
Where do you hope the field is going, and how can we help it get there?
I think it’s relevant and important to do work of consequence. The role of the architect is to embrace complexity of political, economic and social forces and to see them as assets toward a more creative solution instead of as limits to the work.
Lorcan O’Herlihy, FAIA, is an architect and urban designer with offices in Los Angeles, California, and Detroit, Michigan. As founding principal and creative director, Lorcan has led Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA) in building a robust portfolio of work rooted in embracing architecture’s role as a catalyst for change. Enacting a powerful alliance of inventive designs with vigorous social ideals, O’Herlihy’s work prospers whether it is supportive affordable housing in South Los Angeles, working with grassroots neighborhood advocates in Detroit, or designing cultural institutions like the Chapman University dance school.
In addition to building over 100 projects across three continents, Lorcan has been published in over 20 countries and recognized with 200-plus national and international awards, including the 2023 AIACA Maybeck Award, 2021 AIALA Gold Medal, Architect’s Newspaper Best of Practice North America Firm Award, the AIALA Firm of the Year Award, the AIA California Distinguished Practice Award, and was ranked the No. 1 Design Firm in the U.S. by Architect Magazine in 2018. Lorcan O’Herlihy had a new book come out with Rizzoli, “Building in Place: Architecture Rooted in Context and Social Equity,” as of Sept. 17.
