LEVER Architecture founder Thomas Robinson (BA 1991) named Friedman Visiting Professor of Practice

“As an alum of our program, Thomas exemplifies Berkeley’s commitment to pairing outstanding design with environmentally sustainable building practices. His expertise in mass timber — as a researcher and a practitioner who has pioneered the use of mass timber in numerous significant built projects — will add even more energy to the department’s activities around the potentialities of this carbon-neutral technology,” says Department of Architecture Chair Lisa Iwamoto. “I expect exciting synergies to emerge with department faculty who are also exploring regenerative timber in their research, practice, and teaching, such as Mark Anderson, Aaron Forrest, Paul Mayencourt, Philip Tidwell, and Yasmin Vobis.”

Robinson founded LEVER Architecture in Portland in 2009. The firm’s work encompasses multiple scales and typologies, ranging from affordable housing to academic, corporate, and cultural projects. Current projects include Maine’s Portland Museum of Art; Portland State University’s School of Art + Design and two libraries for Multnomah County, Oregon; and in Los Angeles a multi-building campus project for NBCUniversal and 843 N Spring Street, a creative development and one of LA’s largest cross-laminated timber (CLT) buildings.

As a research practice, LEVER develops and tests next-generation building assemblies and sustainable tools, an effort supported by more than $3M in grant funding. In 2015, LEVER was awarded the $1.5 million United States Tall Wood Building Prize to fund full-scale fire, structural, and acoustic testing to demonstrate the viability and safety of timber high-rise structures. 

“I’m interested in how LEVER’s work can evolve the extractive model that underpins contemporary building to a place where material choices can be catalysts for restoring landscapes, communities, and ecologies,” says Robinson.

LEVER was recognized by Fast Company in 2022 as one of the world’s most innovative companies. The practice’s other honors include Architizer’s Top 100 Firms in North America (2024), Architect’s Newspaper Best of Practice Awards, Architect Medium Firm—West (2024), Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard (2017), and the Architectural League of New York’s Emerging Voices (2017). 

Robinson received his BA in architecture with honors from UC Berkeley in 1991. In a lecture he presented last semester in the CED series Technology for a Sustainable Tomorrow, Robinson recalled the professors who made a lasting impression on him as an undergraduate, including Yung-Ho Chang, Anthony Dobovsky, Joseph Esherick, Lars Lerup, Stanley Saitowitz, Jill Stoner, and Ralf Weber. The name of his firm is a nod to Archimedes’ lever, which he first learned about in Spiro Kostof’s architectural history lectures. 

After graduating from UC Berkeley, Robinson worked at EHDD — one of his tasks was hand-building the presentation model for the  Doe Library expansion — before earning his MArch with distinction from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Before founding LEVER, he worked as senior project architect at Herzog & de Meuron, designing the de Young Museum’s perforated copper facade, and as a principal at Allied Works. 

Robinson has lectured nationally and internationally in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and South America and has served as a design critic at Harvard, Columbia, Yale, USC, UCLA, and the University of Oregon. He was elevated to the AIA College of Fellows in 2025.

The Howard A. Friedman Visiting Professorship in the Practice of Architecture honors former faculty member and Department of Architecture chair Howard A. Friedman, FAIA, BA 1949  (1919–1988). It is intended to advance Friedman’s values and philosophy of humanistic architecture and enhance connections between the college and the profession.