James von Klemperer grew up surrounded by ideas. Born in 1957 in Northampton, Massachusetts, he was the son of a historian and a literary scholar, two minds that made him curious about both stories and structures. At Phillips Academy Andover and later at Cambridge, he nurtured that curiosity. He completed his BA magna cum laude in History and Literature at Harvard (1979), focusing on the novelist Céline, before earning his master’s in architecture at Princeton (1983) under Rafael Moneo. Early on, he was the Charles Henry Fiske Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge.
From Apprentice to President: Rising at KPF
Jamie began his architectural journey in 1983 at Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF), the firm that would become his creative home. Through sheer talent and steady leadership, he rose to Principal by 1998 and eventually became President and Design Principal. Under his guidance, KPF remains collaborative, a place where young architects and seasoned hands mix ideas, encouraging innovation through shared values rather than command.
He leads a global community of designers, some 700 people across nine offices, bound by a shared ambition: to shape bold and inclusive urban spaces.
Buildings with Heart and Context
Jamie’s work spans the intimate and the monumental, driven by a belief that every project, big or small, must respect a place. He sees buildings as partners to their surroundings, offering form and structure in tandem with texture and public life. His thinking weaves together craft and scale, from elegant brick arches at 64 University Place to bronze screens in Hong Kong homes, all grounded in deep attention to detail.
Towers, Towns, and Transformations
Jamie has shaped skylines and cityscapes. In New York, One Vanderbilt reached skyward next to Grand Central, reviving Midtown with renewed energy and transit access. In Seoul, he co-led the design of the 555-meter Lotte World Tower, one of the world’s tallest buildings. He also designed North Bund Lot 91 in Shanghai, a sleek, all-electric supertall addressing sustainability goals.
His urban thinking goes even beyond towers. In South Korea, he master planned New Songdo City, the 1,500-acre mixed-use development that set new standards for sustainable “city-making”. In China, he delivered complex urban clusters like Jing An Kerry Centre, Plaza 66, China Central Place, and the China Resources Headquarters, all projects that blur the line between architecture and public domain. In Europe, he has worked on ministries, offices, and towers in Paris, London, Lyon, including One Nine Elms and La Défense’s WINDOW project.
He also doesn’t shy away from quieter building types: the Peterson Institute in D.C., a school in Korea, NYU’s nursing and dental building, and even the Peking University law school, each with awards or praise for marrying form and function.
Teaching, Boards, and an Earned Honor
He talks as much as he builds. Jamie has lectured worldwide, at Yale (as the Saarinen Visiting Professor), Harvard, Columbia, Tsinghua, Tongji, Seoul National, Yonsei, Paris’s ESA, and more. He speaks on urban planning, tall buildings, inclusive public space, and the wider meaning of architecture.
On boards, he leads with purpose: he chairs the Skyscraper Museum and the Urban Design Forum, and serves on the boards of Storefront for Art and Architecture and Bard College. In 2018, the Chicago Athenaeum honored him with the American Prize for Architecture, joining architects like Foster and Meier in a roster of the deeply impactful.
A Bridge Between Vision and Humanity
James von Klemperer is more than a distinguished architect. He is a bridge between history and future, between the young and the wise, between the individual’s dream and the city’s need. His buildings soar, yes, but they also breathe with the rhythms of everyday life. Whether in lecture halls or grand towers, he keeps the conversation alive: architecture matters not just for how it looks, but how it lives.
