Emily Pilloton-Lam

Emily Pilloton-Lam is an American architectural designer, builder, educator, and author known for her work as the founder and executive director of the non-profit organization, Girls Garage, formerly known as Project H Design.

Pilloton-Lam's educational initiative with then boyfriend Matt Miller in Bertie County, North Carolina was profiled in the 2013 documentary film, If You Build It. Her father was born in France, while her mother was born outside of Chicago to immigrant parents from Qingdao and Hong Kong. From a young age, she remembers building structures out of a Quadro set, which she attributes to her early interest in design. It sought to promote design education and community-building. "There are elements to our work and our approach that are not just involving the community but are really dependent upon the community’s vision for their own landscape. Design is not something most people would automatically look to as a way to fix a public education system, and yet, it’s done a lot for our students and their families—and beyond the classroom walls for the community". Based out of Bertie County, North Carolina, one of the poorest counties in the state, Studio H was integrated into local high school curriculums as a means of redefining and reinventing vocational training for the 21st century.

Completed projects Community Chicken Coops, Bertie County, NC, 2010 Cornhole Boards, Bertie County, NC, 2010 Windsor Farmers Market, Bertie County, NC, 2011

Girls Garage In 2013, Pilloton-Lam moved the organization to Berkeley, California, under the new name Girls Garage, to address the gender gap in the architecture and construction industries. Under this new name, the organization also moved away from the model of integrating workshops into high school curriculum, to create after-school and summer programming for girls and gender-diverse youth ages 9–18. Girls Garage became the first dedicated design and building work space for girls in the United States with its 5000-square-foot workshop in West Berkeley.

Proceeds from Pilloton-Lam's 2020 book, Girls Garage: How to Use Any Tool, Tackle Any Project, and Build the World You Want to See, also support the non-profit. Tell Them I Built This: Transforming Schools, Communities, and Lives with Design-Based Education, 2012 Girls Garage: How to Use Any Tool, Tackle Any Project, and Build The World You Want To See, 2020

Awards and honors Along with features and interviews in a variety of news media sources, Pilloton-Lam has been recognized for her contributions to design literacy and community-building with the following awards and honors:

AIA SF Community Alliance Award, 2022 AIGA SF Fellow Award, 2022 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts' YBCA100 (Girls Garage), 2019 Honorary doctorate, Columbus College of Art and Design, 2018 SEED Award, Design Corps, 2015 Master of Design, Fast Company, 2011

Personal life Pilloton-Lam currently lives with her family in Berkeley, California.

In 2021, she published an essay about hyphenating her last name to include her mother's maiden name, Lam — to honor her Chinese lineage, saying "Today, March 17th, I am taking my mother’s maiden name, Lam, as a matriarchal hyphenate. I am doing so for myself, for my mother, for my Chinese matriarchal lineage, and for my Asian American community".