Malini Srivastava, AIA

A talented architect whose elegant cutting-edge projects have garnered a number of significant awards, Malini Srivastava, AIA, works to find solutions that marry good design with a deep-seated concern for the health and safety of a building’s occupants. Srivastava’s prowess as a designer is rivaled only by her skills as a researcher and scholar, and she has been awarded more than $1 million in funding to investigate energy use in the built environment.

An architect and principal at Design and Energy Laboratory in Fargo, North Dakota, Srivastava is fundamentally committed to projects that achieve drastic energy use reduction while remaining as affordable as possible. Previously, at Minneapolis’ Vincent James Associates Architects, she was part of the project team for the Lavin-Bernick Center for University Life on the campus of Tulane University in New Orleans. The project, which received an AIA COTE Top Ten Award in 2008, transformed an inefficient building into a dynamic, sustainable university center. As a senior project architect at salmela in Duluth, Minnesota, Srivastava led the charge on projects such as Izzy’s Ice Cream Factory to construct an attractive small-batch ice cream shop on a vacant brownfield in downtown Minneapolis.

As a researcher, Srivastava’s drive is unparalleled. She leads efargo, a collaboration between North Dakota State University, the City of Fargo, and two local utilities that strives to reduce energy consumption in the city’s residential and municipal buildings. Supported by the Bush Fellowship, Srivastava has also designed and implemented a series of “energy games” for the Fargo community at large and K–12 students as part of her Carnegie Mellon University doctoral thesis. Additionally, through funding from the National Science Foundation, she and her partners at NDSU are planning zero-energy-ready homes for some of North Dakota’s Native American communities.

Inspired by the teachers and mentors who nurtured her growth as an architect, Srivastava views teaching tomorrow’s design professionals as an immense privilege. While her experience as an assistant professor at NDSU and the University of Minnesota College of Design was filled with design studios and courses on materials and construction, her leadership gave rise to NDSU’s design/build program in 2011. The program launched with the construction of a student-designed passive house, which was toured by more than 250,000 Minnesota State Fair visitors. More recently, her students designed a similar house on a parcel of land granted by the City of Fargo.

On the forefront of innovation, Srivastava is an energetic and selfless architect. Through the projects she leads and the students she educates, she demonstrates how powerfully design can change a community for the better.