Karla Sierralta León, AIA, is a Venezuelan-American architect, educator, and researcher. She is Professor and Academic Director of the Bachelor of Environmental Design Program at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa School of Architecture. A native of Maracaibo, Venezuela, she earned her professional architecture degree from La Universidad del Zulia before completing her M.Arch at the University of Illinois at Chicago as a Fulbright–LASPAU grantee. Her hyphenated identity and lived experience as part of the Venezuelan diaspora inform her approach to architecture, shaping a commitment to belonging, resilience, and culturally grounded design.
At the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Sierralta teaches design studios and seminars that explore culture and place, housing and dwelling, and the role of representation in shaping architectural understanding. For ten consecutive years, she developed and refined the School’s first design studio through Single Serial, a pedagogy grounded in design fundamentals and systems thinking that shaped a generation’s first encounter with architecture. Her pedagogical work also includes Draw Story, which examines drawing, place, and identity; Design Exchange, a model for cross-cultural learning that uses reciprocal design collaborations to discover shared ground, first developed at UH through the Peace Memorial partnership with Japan’s Nagaoka Institute of Design; and Re-Imagining Typologies, a studio framework that challenges students to reinterpret inherited architectural models for contemporary and future contexts.
RESEARCH & CREATIVE WORK
Sierralta co-founded Strawn Sierralta with Brian Strawn in 2003. The creative practice is home to her ongoing investigations, bringing together design, research, teaching, and public collaboration across multiple contexts. Rather than treating projects as isolated endeavors, each contributes to a broader and evolving line of inquiry.
Recurring themes across these investigations include memory, loss, hidden histories of place, freedom, the preservation of natural and cultural resources, the democratization of design, resilience, and visions of renewable futures. This body of work has received local, national, and international recognition for innovation, social impact, and design excellence. Recent projects include Beyond Wayfinding, the Hawaiʻi Public Archives Project, ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi Campus, and the Holistic Housing Design Toolkit.
Through her role as Principal Investigator at the University of Hawaiʻi, Sierralta has conducted funded research in collaboration with public agencies, nonprofit organizations, and university partners through grants, cooperative agreements, task orders, and other funding mechanisms. These collaborations translate academic inquiry into publicly accessible methodologies and design tools. Sierralta co-founded the Hawaiʻi Housing Lab, is a member of the UH Community Design Center start-up team, and helped envision the UH Campus Design Lab.
In 2025, Sierralta received national recognition through the ACSA Diversity Achievement Award for the Expanding Understanding Framework. Informed by work developed throughout her time at the University of Hawaiʻi, the framework presents fourteen actions for thinking and making architecture that broaden participation, perspectives, processes, and outcomes in architectural education and practice.
To view selected projects and ongoing investigations, visit strawnsierralta.com.
Areas of Interest
Culture & Place
Housing & Dwelling
Design Tools & Methodologies
Public Interest Design
Professional Experience
Faculty, UH Mānoa School of Architecture (2016–Present)
Director of Undergraduate Studies, Bachelor of Environmental Design (AY 21–23; 24–Present)
Co-Founder, Strawn Sierralta (2003–Present)
Principal Investigator, UH Community Design Center (2017–Present)
Studio Associate Professor, Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture (2010–2016)
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Universidad Rafael Urdaneta (2007–2009)
Adjunct Assistant Professor, University of Illinois Chicago (2006-–2007)
Architectural Designer, Norsman Architects (2003–2007)
Teaching Fellow, La Universidad del Zulia (2000–2001)
Professional Leadership
Board of Directors, AIA Honolulu (2021–2022)
Co-President, Chicago Architectural Club (2012–2014)
Licenses
Registered Architect, Hawai‘i / Illinois
American Institute of Architects (AIA) Member
National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) Certified
Selected Awards & Honors
ACSA Collaborative Practice Award (2022, 2024, 2026)
Architizer Vision Awards (2025)
ACSA Diversity Achievement Award (2025)
The Architect’s Newspaper Best of Design Award (2024)
Fast Company Innovation by Design Award (2023, 2024)
Good Design Award (2023)
SEGD Global Design Award (2023)
AIA Honolulu Award of Excellence, Unbuilt (2023)
AIA Honolulu Distinctive Detail Award (2023)
Fast Company World Changing Ideas Award (2023)
ACSA Course Development Prize (2021)
University of Hawaiʻi Presidential Citation for Meritorious Teaching (2020)
AIA Honolulu Honorable Mention Award (2017, 2018, 2020)
Chicago Architectural Club Emerging Visions (2007)
IBM Engineering Innovation Award (2006)
World Trade Center Memorial Site Competition Finalist (2003)