Meet Alek

Alek Zarifian
Managing Director

Alek is a very passionate and skillful architect who brings a rare combination of intellectual rigor and poetic artfulness to everything he touches. A gifted designer with a generous and poetic heart, Alek is also a consummate craftsman who brings a unique sensibility to the making of buildings, skills honed in his work as a designer on a multitude of projects of various types and natures.

In his career of thirty-four years, he has worked with major architectural firms such as CO Architects, CannonDesign, HDR, and SmithGroup in Los Angeles, with a focus on projects in health care, science and technology, and higher education market sectors. Parallel to his large-scale projects, Alek has also followed his passion in single-family residential and commercial projects where he has brought his fresh and thoughtful approach to the particular market and the community of each project.

Alek holds Bachelor's and Master's of Architecture degrees from the University of Southern California. He is a licensed architect in the state of California. He has been an active member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) since 1992 and a ranking member since 2008. He was elected as the President of the AIA Pasadena and Foothill Chapter in 2013 and was elevated to the AIA College of Fellows in 2016. His work has been published extensively both nationally and internationally and has been recognized by numerous awards at local, regional, and state levels, as well as two AIA national awards. Alek is fluent in English, Persian, and Armenian.