Celebrating Design Excellence: The Lori Klein Design Excellence Award at Kean University
Celebrating Design Excellence: The Lori Klein Design Excellence Award at Kean University
Posen Architects is delighted to announce that this year’s recipient of the Lori Klein Design Excellence Award at Kean University’s Michael Graves College of Architecture + Design, Robert Busch School of Design is the gifted designer and graduating senior, Gianna La Russa.
The Lori Klein Design Excellence Award was established in 2025 to recognize Lori’s longstanding dedication to leadership in healthcare design, her unwavering commitment to Best Practices and Evidence-Based Design, her mentorship of emerging professionals, and her more than twenty-five years of service as Director of Design and Design Principal at the firm. The annual award includes a monetary prize and the opportunity to shadow a staff designer at Posen Architects, providing valuable hands-on experience and professional insight into the design industry.
This year’s competition featured seven interior design healthcare project submissions. The jury—composed of Dennis Posen, AIA, Lori Klein, CID, Tom Fantacone, AIA and Laura Confalonieri, NCIDQ, LEED AP ID+C, unanimously selected Gianna La Russa’s Young Women’s Health Center as the first-place submission.
As Lori Klein noted:
“Giana’s project was the most professional and hit all the requirements with very high marks from the committee. The tone is set from the first page—written brief, site plan, mood board with soft yet gender-neutral tones, and adjacency and blocking diagrams that tell the entire story. Giana’s soft-spoken narration speaks to the community and how the center can also be used for community events, incorporating counseling space and a library.”
Gianna’s work exemplifies the values at the heart of the Lori Klein Design Excellence Award: innovative problem-solving, evidence-based design thinking, and a commitment to creating environments that positively impact people’s lives. We are proud to recognize her outstanding achievement and look forward to following her continued success as she embarks on her professional design journey.
Congratulations, Gianna, on this well-deserved honor.