Image: Payette
The School of Architecture is pleased to welcome Charles S. Klee, AIA, LEED AP as an adjunct faculty professor this semester. Charlie holds a Master of Architecture degree from Carnegie Mellon University and is a principal at Payette, where he leads the firm’s Research Initiative with the Building Science Group. He brings new ideas and technology to the practice in his independent research projects in which he assesses both the programmatic and technical performance of buildings.
Payette is a highly collaborative Boston-based practice, in which ten partners share equal roles in marketing, management, and design. Payette's diverse, multigenerational design culture has remained true its founders’ principles, while empowering successive generations to apply more potent capabilities towards practicing them.
A son of two biochemists at the National Institutes of Health, Charlie learned to value exploration and rigorous thought. His experience working in labs throughout high school and college led him to pursue a liberal arts education at Swarthmore college where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering with Distinction.
Charlie has led design teams on technically challenging science-centric projects such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology PDSI Project, the Gary C. Comer Geochemistry Building at Columbia University, and the Boston University Center for Integrated Life Sciences and Engineering. He also collaborated with the Renzo Piano Building Workshop on the Harvard Art Museums 32 Quincy Street Expansion and Renovation. Starting with his education at CMU, his practice focuses on the intersection of quantifiable performance with formal design.