Elisa Renouard

Background

About Elisa Renouard

Elisa Renouard is a practicing designer and a Lecturer in the University of Washington Department of Architecture, where she teaches design studio, architectural representation, and research seminars. She holds a M.Arch from the UW. Her background in literature, art history, and the humanities —she has bachelor degrees in these subjects—informs her work, as she is interested in representation and the ways that architecture is shaped by its relationship to place, time, and narrative. Elisa practices as an Associate and Senior Designer/Project Manager with Olson Kundig. Since joining the award-winning firm in 2014, she has worked across a broad range of project types and scales, from private residential to commercial projects. This professional experience is key to her approach in teaching design, where she emphasizes process and the role of both conceptual and technical design development. The focus of Elisa’s independent research is the layered experience of cities and the elusive landscape of memory. Her work studies the connections between architecture and socio-cultural contexts, patterns of urban morphology, and the fleeting but meaningful stories that define place. At a broader scale, this research considers socially and politically charged space as a critical shaper of experience.