Andrea Leers


Andrea Leers is an American architect and educator. Together with Jane Weinzapfel, Leers created the Boston-based architecture firm Leers Weinzapfel Associates which was the first woman-owned firm to win the American Institute of Architects Architecture Firm Award in 2007. In 1991, she was elected to the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows.
Leers is former Director of the Master in Urban Design Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design where she was Adjunct Professor of Architecture and Urban Design from 2001 to 2011. Her academic career includes teaching positions at Yale University's School of Architecture, the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Fine Arts, the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the University of Virginia School of Architecture. In 1982 she spent a year in Japan as a NEA/ Japan U.S. Friendship Commission Design Arts Fellow. Leers was a Visiting Artist at the American Academy of Rome, invited to be Chaire des Ameriques at the Sorbonne , and was Chair Professor at the National Chiao Tung University. In 2018, Leers was appointed to serve as Chair of Commission for the city of Boston.

Early life and education

Leers was born in Miami, Florida and raised in Springfield and Longmeadow, Massachusetts. She holds an undergraduate degree in art history from Wellesley College and a Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Fine Arts during the tenure of Louis I. Kahn. After an apprenticeship period in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Leers founded a practice in 1970 with former husband Hugh Browning, and when they divorced in 1978 she led the firm until 1982. In 1982 she and Jane Weinzapfel established Leers Weinzapfel Associates in Boston, Massachusetts.

Significant projects

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