Karolina Kawiaka received her AB in Fine Art, Art History and Architecture from Smith College, and her Master of Architecture degree from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. She teaches Architecture, Drawing, Digital Drawing and Fabrication, and Senior Seminar courses in the Studio Art Department, Digital Fabrication in the Computer Science Department, and Regenerative Design and Sustainability classes in the Environmental Studies Department and Thayer School of Engineering.
She is a registered architect, member of the American Institute of Architects, and the principal of the Karolina Kawiaka Studio in Vermont. She serves on the Steering Commitee for US Architects Declare and earned the Zero Energy Design Designation from the US Department of Energy for her Dartmouth classes. Her firm's work includes building, landscape and planning projects focusing on regenerative design and green infrastructure, as well as digital drawing, fabrication and installations. Recent work includes projects in Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, Michigan, Washington DC and Washington State.
Kawiaka has been an invited critic at Yale Graduate University School of Architecture, Columbia/ Barnard Architecture Program, Middlebury College, University of Texas Graduate School of Architecture and Planning, Rhode Island School of Design, Bennington College, Mississippi State University School of Architecture, University of Arkansas Department of Landscape Architecture, Norwich University School of Architecture, Yestermorrow Design-Build School, University of Washington Architecture School, Parsons the New School for Design and Marlboro College, among many others.
Her work has been published in The Washington Post, USA Today, The International Business Times, Fine Homebuilding Magazine, ArchDaily, ArchitectureBoston and Design New England Magazine, and has been shown nationally, including at the Shelburne Museum and Bennington Museum, and is in the collection of the New Britain Museum of American Art. She was nominated for a Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt Design Award and is the recipient of a Delmas Venetian Studies Grant, a Whiting Fellowship, Leslie Center for the Humanities Faculty Travel and Research Grants, Neukom Institute Grants, a John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding Research Grant, the Dartmouth College Student Assembly Profiles in Excellence Teaching Award, the Dartmouth College Distinguished Lecturer Award, Dartmouth's first Faculty Lorax Sustainability Award, the Campus Compact of NH Humanitarian Award, two Vermont Arts Council Creation Grants.
She was a winner in the Washington Monument Grounds Ideas Competition and received the Honor Award from the Vermont American Society of Landscape Architects for Landscape Planning, Research and Analysis. She has been invited on multiple occasions to present her Federal Triangle Interior Floodplan to over 50 agencies and stakeholders in Washington, DC including the Silver Jackets.
Her research on Palladio's design process and 3D digital visualizations of his Renaissance drawings have been published in the Nexus Network Journal.
