For Immediate Release
Contact: Meghan Hudson
Membership & Communications Associate

Baltimore, MD (March 4, 2024) – Kathleen Lechleiter, FAIA, of Baltimore based Twopoint Studio, LLC, and Anath Ranon, FAIA, of Quinn Evans Architects, have been elevated to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the institute’s highest membership honor.

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) admits member-architects to its prestigious College of Fellows annually. Since 1952, AIA leaders have recognized a small group of members for “significant contributions to the architecture profession.” Three percent of AIA members have this distinction.

Kathleen Lechleiter’s practice model eradicates housing insecurity and instability for underserved people. By combining design, teaching, and public engagement, she enacts solutions to homelessness, advances fair housing development, promotes sustainability, and builds healthy, equitable communities. Twopoint Studio is a certified MBE/WBE business. Her practice centers on providing marginalized residents stable places to live, to build equity, and to achieve economic opportunity. From her practice to academic and community engagement, she consistently supports the residents within our neighborhoods and challenges her students to prioritize the communities we serve.

Some of Lechleiter’s notable work includes:

• Hollander Ridge/Broadway Homes Scattered Site – The model of scattered-site rehab of single-family market rate homes into public housing units that are aesthetically indiscernible from existing neighbors placed 152 low-income families into established communities with access to transportation, jobs, schools, and healthy food options away from impoverished urban areas with high concentrations of poverty.

• The Linden House – Restoration and renovation of a historic home for five formerly homeless families in permanent supportive housing created stability and security, serving the Women’s Housing Coalition’s mission to break homelessness by providing high-quality, service-enriched housing.
• Light City: Breaking Bread – Partnered with the Creative Alliance and the Baltimore Office of the Performing Arts during Light City where a struggling community garden provided the opportunity to unite a neighborhood of second generation immigrants, refugees, and an insular Latino population by creating spaces to gather, share food, and celebrate community.
• Re-stART with ART – An art auction established to provide connection between the public and residents of the Baltimore Station, a population of veterans suffering from addiction and homelessness working towards self sufficiency, and provide ongoing revenue stream for its programs.

Anath Ranon’s career has focused on complex historic preservation and adaptive use projects, infusing old buildings with creative ideas and renewed purpose. She enjoys the challenge of balancing competing interests, including historic integrity, tax credits, building codes, energy codes, and new program requirements, to create compelling places that bring new energy and sustenance to aging communities. Anath is the founder of AIA Baltimore’s Historic Resources Committee and an active leader in many organizations that focus on preserving architectural heritage. Her portfolio includes planning and design of community projects, civic and commercial buildings, and educational facilities.

Some of Ranon’s notable work includes:

• Latrobe Building (aka Hotel Ulysses) – rehabilitation of this former luxury apartment building into a boutique hotel, including receipt of historic tax credits
• Lion Brothers Building – transformation of the vacant industrial building into a variety of workplace, entrepreneurial and education spaces while retaining and celebrating its key original features. The project received historic tax credits and has catalyzed more development in its southwest Baltimore community.
• Rouse Building – reconfiguration and adaptive use of this early Frank-Gehry designed building for mixed use while celebrating key original design elements
• Fred Lazarus IV Center – adaptive use design for the multi-phase renovation of the historic warehouse into graduate and undergraduate art education spaces, which featured an enlivened street presence, new collaborative teaching spaces and exposed structure
• American Brewery – preservation and adaptive use of the former abandoned brewery into office headquarters and community space, creating a reincarnated version of its former self and catalyzing development in its east Baltimore neighborhood. The project received historic tax credits.

This June, Lechleiter, Ranon, and 94 other new Fellows elevated in 2024 will be honored at an investiture ceremony at the AIA Conference on Architecture in Washington, D.C.

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