Merge Architects

Elizabeth Whittaker established Boston-based Merge Architects in 2003. Merge seeks to “produce an architecture that embraces the art of making within a larger agenda: to re-define the urban and social boundaries of the city.” Recent projects include Lightwell, an orthodontics office in Waltham, MA; MIT Beaver Works, a multi-use research space for students, faculty, and technical professionals developed in collaboration with the MIT School of Engineering located in Cambridge; a Peg Wall made of over 40,000 wooden dowels that serves as storage space and an enclosure, designed for a private loft in Chelsea, New York; Penn Street Lofts, a six-unit condominium complex in Quincy, MA; and Marginal Street Lofts, a nine-unit residential building on Boston’s waterfront. Current projects include a YMCA Health and Wellness Center in East Brookfield, MA and a prototype for His / Hers House, a single-family housing structure.

Merge Architects received Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard award in 2014; a total of twelve AIA awards from Boston Society of Architects’ BSA Design Awards and AIA New England Design Awards; as well as a citation for the international Boston Harbor Park Pavilion competition. The practice is also a recipient of the AIA Academy of Architecture for Health National Design Award in 2014, and winner of a Best of Year Award from Interior Design Magazine for the project Lightwell. Merge Architects was also named among the “15 Young Firms to Watch” by Residential Architect magazine.

Elizabeth Whittaker is assistant professor in practice of architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and has also taught design studios at MIT, Northeastern University, and Boston Architectural College. She received her M.Arch from Harvard University Graduate School of Design and her B.Envd from North Carolina State University.