Global architecture and design firm Perkins&Will announced today that Lesley Braxton has rejoined the firm as a cross-practice design principal. Collaborating with teams within the firm’s Southeast studios, she will engage with communities to better understand their histories, create dialogues for truth sharing and invest in their futures through placemaking.

Lesley returns to Perkins&Will after 2-1/2 years with New Orleans-based Trahan Architects. For the last nine months, she has also served as an invited lecturer for multiple institutions and adjunct professor at the College of Architecture, Design and Construction at Auburn University, her alma mater, a role she will continue while at Perkins&Will.

During her previous time at Perkins&Will, she led numerous high-profile projects including Samuel Merritt University’s Oakland City Center Campus, the Lavin-Bernick Student Center Feasibility Study at Tulane University and multiple projects at Emory University, including the institution’s Office of Advancement & Alumni Engagement and Alumni Memorial University Center. 

Lesley is especially passionate about her renewed opportunity with Perkins&Will to focus on the process of authenticating architecture. “Ideas for a design must come from somewhere, and for me, they are often born out of what can be learned from a site – histories, watershed, ecology and the cultures that have risen from these unique conditions,” she reflects. “However, architecture isn’t always the answer, and when we recognize this, our work can become even more connected with our communities and natural environment.” 

Having lived in Atlanta for over 17 years, Lesley is passionate about the City and where it is going: “There’s so much good happening here with our mayor, public policy investments in housing and inventive cultural spaces.” She adds, “we each have a role to play in demonstrating the equitable, humane and just capacities of architecture. These are global challenges that, block by block, we can solve together.”

Lesley is a member of National Council of Architectural Registration Boards, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the International Interior Design Association (IIDA). Additionally, she is a recipient of the AIA’s Committee on the Environment Award and its Georgia Design Merritt Award for Georgia Tech University Engineered Biosystems Building (2018).

“With incredible experience across higher education, science/technology, corporate and numerous other sectors, Lesley has a rare gift for working across sectors and blending influences of each project into the next,” said David Dymecki, Principal and Managing Director of Perkins&Will’s Atlanta Studio. “We are thrilled that she has ‘boomeranged’ back to Perkins&Will and are excited to see the impact she will make here in Atlanta and across the Southeast.”