Erik L’heureux

Erik L’Heureux (PhD) FAIA, LEED AP BD+C is an award-winning American architect and educator, known for his design scholarship on building envelopes in the “hot and wet” urban equator and his academic leadership as Vice Dean, Special Projects (2018–21), overseeing the School of Design and Environment’s campus (now the College of Design and Engineering) transformation of 40,500 sq. m (434,500 sq. ft) of new and renovated facilities at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

As a Dean’s Chair Associate Professor, L’Heureux has taken on several leadership and collaborative roles within the department, including a thematic reorganization of the curriculum, and increasing the diversity of design faculty when serving as B.A. Architecture (2015-20) and Master of Architecture (2020-22) Programme Director, which contributed to the department’s global rise from eleventh (11th) to sixth (6th) place under the Q.S. World University Rankings. He is a leader of the Research by Design cluster, which focuses on developing translational approaches through creative practice research.

L’Heureux’s pioneering integration of creative practice and academic research into mid-20th-century equatorial architecture and its relationship with the urban environment, climate and atmosphere in Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Ghana and Brazil earned him a Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design Wheelwright Prize in 2015. As an architect and designer, he has completed over 40 projects. L’Heureux’s “simple” series (A Simple Headquarters, A Simple Terrace House, A Simple Factory Building) and such built work as An Equatorial School of Architecture, Hut House, Stereoscopic House and 1000 Singapores have been peer reviewed and awarded by the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the Society of American Registered Architects (SARA), the INDE Design Awards, the World Architecture Festival (WAF), a President of Singapore Design Award, and featured in nearly 100 professional and design periodicals, including Oculus, Icon, InDesign, Design+Architecture, Architecture Asia, and Archinesia among others.

Outcomes of L’Heureux’s research have been widely exhibited, particularly in the 1000 Singapore exhibitions at the Venice Biennale (Italy), Cite de l’Architecture (France), and the National Design Centre (Singapore). An innovative educational programmer, L’Heureux is a seven-time teaching award-winner, and outcomes of his design studios have been exhibited in the 2017 and 2019 Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism (South Korea), which was covered in more than 1,500 South Korean and international news reports, and 29 South Korean news broadcasts. His wide-ranging exhibition history includes the Asian Culture Complex (South Korea), Steinberg Gallery (U.S.) and the Center for Architecture in New York City (U.S.).

An author of Renovating Carbon (2023), Drawing Climate (2021), and the monograph Deep Veils (2014), L’Heureux, has been published with notable publishers, including Birkhäuser and ORO Editions. Many are now in the academic collections of Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Stanford, Yale, University of California, Berkeley, Cambridge University, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and elsewhere. In addition to his designs, books, and monographs, L’Heureux is also the oft-published author and co-author of more than 20 articles and papers, including “Climatic Design and Its Others” (2020) in the peer-reviewed Journal of Architectural Education that received the Best Article Award, Scholarship of Design in 2021.

L’Heureux received his PhD from the School of Architecture and Urban Design at RMIT University, where he was awarded an RMIT prize for research excellence in design. A graduate of Princeton University, he received his Master of Architecture as a recipient of the Suzanne K. Underwood Design Award. He received his B.A. in Architecture as a James W. Fitzgibbon Scholar at Washington University in St Louis. He was later honored with a Distinguished Alumni Award in 2007. L’Heureux is a registered architect in the USA and Singapore, NCARB certified, and a LEED-accredited Building Design and Construction professional. L’Heureux was elevated to the prestigious College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects in 2020 in recognition of his contributions “to advance the science and art of planning and building by advancing the standards of architectural education, training, and practice.”