Norman Pfeiffer, an influential Southern California-based architect who founded the precursor to what is now Pfeiffer, a Perkins Eastman Studio, has passed away in Los Angeles after a short battle with illness.

Known for his contributions to the cultural and higher-education sectors of the region, Pfeiffer brought a collaborative approach to the design of public buildings that changed the ways architects think about a building’s effects on civic life and the public realm.

Born in Washington in 1940, Pfeiffer studied at Columbia University before founding the influential practice Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates (HHPA) with Hugh Hardy and Malcolm Holzman in New York in 1967. Before the firm disbanded in 2004, it had garnered national recognition through its designs for the renovated Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum and the original Colburn School campus in downtown Los Angeles. An AIA Firm Award came in 1981, and Pfeiffer decided to expand his practice permanently to the West Coast ahead of the completion of his since demolished Robert O. Anderson building for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA ) in 1986. 

After the dissolution, Pfeiffer practiced in Los Angeles, working on major higher-ed projects at Stanford, Caltech, USC, and UCLA. He would go on to author the renovation and expansion of the Griffith Park Observatory’s underground exhibition areas, which was completed in 2006, and helped work out the master plan for Yale University and the National University of Singapore College campus and arts projects before finally retiring in 2020.

“Norman is perhaps the architect with the greatest impact on Los Angeles’s cultural sector,” his wife, Patricia Zohn, remembered to the LA Times fondly. “Yet he was also the antithesis of a starchitect: modest, self-effacing and with a focus squarely on the project.” 

Pfeiffer was 83 years old.