Design Leader Andrea Leers Named Spring Commencement Speaker

Andrea Leers, FAIA, an internationally recognized leader in urban, campus, and civic design, will be Wentworth Institute of Technology’s Spring 2023 Commencement keynote speaker.   

The principal and co-founder of Leers Weinzapfel Associates in Boston Andrea Leers, Leers is a pioneer in mass timber design for academic settings. Her practice has been honored with more than 100 international, national, and regional design awards, including the 2007 AIA National Firm Award.  

A monograph on the firm’s work “Made to Measure: The Work of Leers Weinzapfel Associates" was published in 2011 by Princeton Architectural Press. The firm additionally designed the Center for Engineering, Innovation, and Sciences on the Wentworth campus in close cooperation with the university's Construction Management program. 

Andrea Leers is the former Director of the Master in Urban Design Program and Adjunct Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and has taught at Yale, University of Pennsylvania, University of Virginia, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology.  She was Chaire des Amériques at the University of Paris, Sorbonne, Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome, and NEA Japan-US Friendship Commission Fellow in Tokyo.  Her recent book Welcoming the West; Japan’s Grand Resort Hotels was published by JOVIS Verlag Berlin.   

Leers is the former Chair of the Mayor’s Boston Civic Design Commission, and a member of the University of Washington Architectural Advisory Commission, and the Harvard University Design Advisory Pool. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from Wellesley College, and a Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Fine Arts.    

Wentworth’s Spring 2023 Commencement ceremony will take place on April 22 on the university’s Boston campus. Leers will be joined by student speaker Greg Murphy, a military veteran who is currently enrolled in the Master of Construction Management program.