Meet Zen Carpentry's Chief Designer, Lizzy Zevallos

Meet Zen Carpentry's Chief Designer, Lizzy Zevallos.

Meet Zen carpentry’s chief designer, Lizzy Zevallos. An experienced architectural designer, graphic designer, and illustrator, Lizzy has an eye for re-imagining and re-shaping small spaces. She is particularly interested in clean articulated designs, and designs with a philosophy where form follows function. Lizzy has worked on a slew of interesting architectural and graphic design projects around New York City; her resume includes graphic work with the Lowline - an organization aiming to build an underground green park in the Lower East Side, and architectural designs for Capital Cooperative - a real estate development firm focused on craft condos made from locally sourced and sustainable materials.

With Zen Carpentry, Lizzy has contributed immensely to our sense of fine-customized details. She is particularly good at focusing on the lifestyle and needs of each of our clients.

Design and rendering for a simple lofted kitchen platform in Brooklyn Heights

She enjoys the ability to problem solve a particularly tricky space while giving our clients design solutions that help shape their individual lifestyles. At Zen, we are driven to satisfy our clients’ home needs while using locally sourced, sustainable, and beautiful woods. Lizzy approaches each project with openness and enjoys taking suggestions from clients as well as offering new ones.

Who are your favorite designers?:

Design for a client who wanted lots of storage and a "media room" down below

I adore Louis Kahn. He designed with a graceful simplicity and a huge attention to light. He paid close attention to the way in which people would inhabit the space, and designed buildings to create nearly spiritual experiences for those living and passing through them. By using simplicity, geometric forms, and honest materials, he made so many other-worldly transformative pieces of architecture. Check out one of his most influential projects here: http://www.archdaily.com/tag/louis-kahn.

Recently, I’ve also been following Boston-based designer, Ben Uyeda. Not only does he have an architecture firm that boasts some of the best energy-performance green architecture in the United States, but he also dedicates his creativity to DIY home projects that are clever, elegant, and crafty in the most sophisticated of ways. He is true to his building materials, and always opts to use the quality of his building materials as decoration in and of themselves – whether its the grain of found wood, supportive black iron piping, or cast concrete. Check out some of his stuff here: http://homemade-modern.com

The Zen Cedar Container & Closet loft - designed to fit bins from the Container Store

Above: Design for a loft bed with plenty of bedroom storage - closets, drawers, and cubbies that were sized to fit a set of bins from The Container Store. Under the bed you can find an office area with a build in desk, bulletin board space and more storage cubbies. Final version below, without desk: 

This is an adaptation of an original design by Mcleod Kredell Architects in Vermont. This is a clever design for a 3 bedroom loft (two on top and one down below) with plenty of smartly placed storage units. 

Conceptual design and hand-drawn rendering of a mixed-use green building for a property in Long Island City, Queens - made for Capital Cooperative.

Lizzy Zevallos graduated summa cum laude from Middlebury College with a Bachelor in Arts focused on Architectural Design and Architectural History. There, she won the Christian A. Johnson Prize for Excellence in Architecture. Since moving to New York City, she has written and edited for Architectural Record magazine, and worked with The Lowline – an organization aiming to build an underground park in the Lower East Side. She is currently the principal designer at Zen Carpentry and Capital Cooperative.

Aside from design, Lizzy is also a visual and performance artist. Her work has been featured at Outlet Gallery and Annex Gallery in New York City. She has also performed as a professional dancer at New York venues such as Lincoln Center Jazz, Alvin Ailey City Center, Manhattan Movement Arts Center, and Dixon Place, as well as around the United States and in Europe. In commercial dance spheres, she has danced on the Today Show, in the McDonald’s B-boy Royale, and featured in dance films and music videos.