Brenda Levin FAIA, Recognized at USBCG-CA with Lifetime Achievement Award

My sincere thanks to the California Preservation Foundation for this unexpected honor – and to Cindy Heitzman for her stellar leadership and to Jeff Calwell for his support in my nomination.

When one receives a lifetime achievement award it offers the opportunity to reflect on one’s career and the extraordinary good fortune I have had - and to acknowledge the  talented Levin & Associates team with whom I have collaborated, and our colleagues and clients who have supported my firm over the past 40+ years.

In a way I did not choose preservation as a focus of my firm – it chose me. Had I not met Wayne Ratkovich at the exact time he started his development firm with the purchase of the Oviatt Building, followed by many gems, and our decades long partnership – I might not have found my way into what became the extraordinary privilege of designing, preserving and adapting buildings. I grew up and have lived in great cities (New York/Boston) which have influenced me as they honor the past by integrating new and existing buildings, creating a visually and culturally rich urban environment.

In choosing architecture as a profession, I have always wanted to have an impact on the urban design of the city. To quote Julia Morgan, “Architecture can be a powerful force for positive change in our communities.”

An architecture of repurposing, repairing, retrofitting, remaking, and reusing—it is an architecture of purpose and promise, an architecture of the greater good. As the world’s highest per-capita energy consumers and carbon emitters, Americans have a special responsibility to rethink how we use and reuse our built environment.

The timeline to see an actual project come to fruition from concept to completion can often feel like a lifetime. Architecture is not for the impatient and the preservation and conservation of iconic buildings add untold complexity and challenges. But the tradeoff is the extraordinary joy that I have experienced when walking into Griffith Observatory and observing young and old marvel at the building, to listen to music at Wilshire Boulevard Temple and see  heads turn up to the impressive, coffered dome in awe, and to attend a baseball game at Dodger Stadium knowing that we have enhanced the mid-century modern iconic building with compatible and distinct new buildings for fans.

I have been very lucky. I have a life partner, my husband David Abel, who revels in my accomplishments and consoles me in my losses. His insistence, now proven, was that Los Angeles would provide me with unmatched professional opportunities. I have had mentors like Wayne Ratkovich and Ira Yellin and clients who have lifted me up and carried me along with the successes we shared. 

This Lifetime Achievement recognition belongs to all whose shoulders I stand upon. I accept this honor with profound respect for the California Preservation Foundation. I accept it in the memory of my parents, and with immeasurable thanks to my extraordinary prescient husband, and for my son Eliot, daughter-in-law Abby, and two delicious grandchildren, Nora and Andrew, who represent the promise of tomorrow.

Thank you.