Ersela Kripa

Ersela Kripa is an Albanian-born, American architect, artist, and teacher. Her work has won numerous awards and honors, including the Rome Prize, the Architecture Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the MacDowell Fellowship. She currently directs the architecture program at Texas Tech University, El Paso.

Life and education Kripa was born in the People's Socialist Republic of Albania, and briefly lived in Greece as a refugee before seeking asylum in the United States in 1996. Her father was a structural engineer and Kripa credits her interest in architecture to learning from his work with architectural blueprints. During this period she also taught architecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. In 2010, Kripa won a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts in the field of architecture. In 2015, Kripa moved with her firm to El Paso, Texas, and is currently associate professor and director of the architecture program at Texas Tech University, El Paso.

Kripa's architectural work and research focuses on marginalized communities in urban and border spaces, examining the intersection of rights, and design. In 2018, they won the 'Emerging Voices' Award from The Architectural League of New York for their work in examining personal agency in conflict zones. Installations designed by Kripa have been exhibited at the Hong Kong–Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale for Architecture and Urbanism, the Venice Biennale, and the Berlin Biennale.