Founder and Design Principal Zoltan E. Pali launched SPF:a in 1995 with partner Judit M. Fekete-Pali. The firm has received over 100 national and regional design awards, including an American Architecture Award in 2014 for the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills and an AIALA Presidential Award for leading the executive architecture team on the $280-million renovation and expansion of the Getty Villa Museum.
Known for an elegant minimalist approach rooted in California modernism and honed over a 40-year career, Zoltan has designed projects in varying typologies and scales, from iconic cultural facilities and creative office buildings to multiunit housing, signature residences and public infrastructure. Notable projects include WE3 at Water’s Edge—160,000 square-feet of LEED Gold creative office space—and MODAA, a mixed-use live/work space in the heart of Culver City.
An LA native, Zoltan began his architectural career while a student at UCLA. Prior to founding SPF:a, he worked alongside prominent Case Study architect Jerrold E. Lomax, FAIA, who was one of the original LA12, a famed 1976 group exhibition that included Frank Gehry, Cesar Pelli, and Craig Ellwood.
Zoltan has served as a visiting professor and lecturer at the University of Southern California, and a visiting critic at both the Cal Poly Pomona School of Architecture and UCLA School of Art and Architecture. In 2005, he was inducted into the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows.
- What do you love about architecture?
That it is so hard and demanding—that is if you want to do it well. I also love it because I think it is a fully worthwhile pursuit and something one can do every day and forever. So much of the practice of architecture—now as far as results go—is hard to love because there is so much bad work being performed, but once you experience something good, your view of life and humanity is elevated. I am of the belief that your visual surroundings affect your well being.
- What is your most memorable architectural moment?
There have been many "most" memorable moments; I can't think of just one. Seeing Fallingwater for the first time, seeing the Salk for the first time, walking into the Kimball, stacking hay on the hay barn in Somis, watching the crowd wait for a show at the Annenberg, the Eiffel Tower at the age of six, Il Duomo at the age of 16, Lomax's Westgate house... I am too far in the years to have just one memorable moment!