Zoka Zola

Zoka Zola is a Croatian architect and teacher who operates her own studio in Chicago, Illinois. She has license to work as an architect in the US, the UK, and Croatia. Her most notable work is the Pfanner House for which she received the Home of the Year Award named as the best house in North America by Architecture Magazine. Kenneth Frampton's publication the American Masterworks: Houses of the 20th and 21st Centuries lists this house among the 43 houses constructed in the USA since 1985. She is also a professor at the School of Architecture at University of Illinois, Chicago. Her firm is also involved in design of three zero energy houses of which one is located in Chicago (for which she has received an award) and the other two are in Kuala Lumpur.

Biography Zola, born in Rijeka, Croatia, She is also involved with a zero-carbon training centre and tourist hotel in Hong Kong.

The Zero Energy Glass & Bedolla House designed and built by Zola, though a low end luxury home with lot of space, has blended every available space in the house with solar, wind and geothermal methods (without recourse to fossil fuel energy source) in a "modern-organic-fusion style". The exterior surface of the house is covered with "greenery" that works as thermal insulation in hot or cold weather.

Zola's preference to use of metals in her architectural designs is explained by her: "Our buildings are made of metal but this is not something that many people would think about; metals are the real building blocks of architecture".