Founder
Elaheh Demirchelie, is a real estate developer and an architect, currently serving as the Director of Real Estate Predevelopment at Greystar.
Previously, she held the position of Chief Creative Officer at Mark Cavagnero Associates. She has served as Design and Creative Director at various firms associated with the built environment and has worked on large-scale, global projects during her time at Mark Cavagnero Associates, John Portman & Associates, and HKS Inc., among others.
Elaheh’s work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design Award, The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies Award, and the Hermes Creative Gold Award.
Elaheh’s educational background includes a Master of Science in Real Estate Development from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was distinguished as a CRE Fellow and was the recipient of the Sandbox Innovation Fund. She also holds a Master of Architecture and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from Georgia Institute of Technology with her academic research focused extensively on sustainable design, innovation, technology, multifamily and micro-housing. The same principles of social and environmental responsibility exist in the ethos of every project she takes on, while collaborating with like-minded clients, users, contractors, and stakeholders.
As part of her personal investment to continually support education, she has served as faculty and invited juror of architecture and real estate development in multiple collegiate settings such as MIT, Georgia Tech, U.C. Berkeley, Harvard University, KSU, and various others, seeking to foster innovative pedagogies and methodologies.
Her passion for the built environment and the community transcends her professional endeavors. As a guiding force in several community-oriented projects, she has embraced the art of creating spaces that encapsulate the essence of community, fostering unity and embodying the unique spirit of a place. In her most recent contribution, she created Restore49 with San Francisco nonprofits and donors amid the COVID-19 pandemic to activate various contextual layers and regions within the Bay Area. The project was recognized by Architizer and published in various media outlets.
Elaheh is certified by the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards and a member of the American Institute of Architects and Urban Land Institute. To spearhead new initiatives that pave the way for transformative progress, she serves as a board member for multiple nonprofit organizations and as an advisor to startups operating in the built environment. She has been a speaker on various topics related to business, real estate, technology, and architecture at many universities and conferences such as the Real Estate Forum, the International Design Academy, the Commercial Real Estate Development Association Forum and CRETECH.
About
A multidisciplinary design ideology
Our work spans multiple contexts to include creative direction, architecture, and product design.
We focus on projects that serve as a reflection of our time, current technology, and culture and places experience at the core of the design process in generating designs that captivate the senses and cultivate social inclusion and interaction.
Our mission is to invest time on projects that work towards the betterment of humanity, inspiring the way we live, learn, heal, work, and play. Sensitive to the ever-evolving needs of the built environment, our core areas of research have been net-zero energy and sustainable design, compact housing, and technology in design.
Architecture
We believe in architecture that is synonymous with its programmatic, contextual and environmental needs; manipulated to generate unconventional building constructs to establish new, balanced anatomy of forms.
Our work is highly exploratory and research-oriented; grounded in a speculative process, promoting thinking, writing, and making. We use various digital technologies to advance the conceptual exploration of ideas. Interconnected to this, we deploy manual form of craftsmanship and continue to use drawing, painting and making by hand in creating new trajectories.
Interior Design
We collaborate with makers, artists, designers, and craftsmen to push the boundaries of design in each project and to provide our clients with spaces that are formed around their identity and requirements.
MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund Program Funds 1Goggle 2021
MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund Program funds our project 1Goggle, a furniture search engine that uses AI and machine learning, to craft search results based on user preferences.
LEONOEL receives the First Award in RTF Awards 2021
LEONOEL is a sustainable fashion brand based in San Francisco, merging design, technology, and science in reducing the environmental footprint of garments through their entire lifecycle. Leonoel consists of 100% compostable, biodegradable, and reclaimed collection of clothes.
Global Design & Architecture Design Awards 2021
First Award | Category: Fashion, Lifestyle & Accessories
BUILD Award, Leading Multidisciplinary Design Studio, California, 2021
We are thrilled to place as the winner of the Design & Build Awards leading Multidisciplinary Design Studio in California.
2019 GOOD DESIGN® Award by The Chicago Athenaeum, Museum of Architecture and Design and The European center for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies
2019 GOOD DESIGN® Award by The Chicago Athenaeum, Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies, 2019 GOOD DESIGN® Award, Awarded for Corporate Identity, Architecture and Design Industry.
“Now in its 69th year, GOOD DESIGN® is one the oldest awards programs organized worldwide. Founded in Chicago in 1950 by the former MoMA curator Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., together with such pioneers in modern design as Charles and Ray Eames, Russel Wright, George Nelson, and Eero Saarinen, GOOD DESIGN® honors the yearly achievements of the best industrial and graphic designers and world manufacturers for their pursuit of extraordinary design excellence.”
2019 Gold Recipient of the 13th International Design Awards, IDA
Demirchelie received gold for her fashion startup LEONOEL; a San Francisco based sustainable fashion label, which intersects design, environmental science, and technology, contributing to the transformation of the fashion industry by inserting digital design in the process and striving to achieve the smallest environmental footprint throughout the entire life cycle of garments.
2019 Hermes Creative Award – Gold Award
Gold Award, Judged by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals, Awarded for branding and market positioning companies in the Architecture and Design industry.
Hermes Creative Award is constructed by Society Awards’, which includes the Golden Globes, Emmy’s, MTV, Academy of Country Music, The Voice and Dancing with the Stars.
2020 A’ Design Award Grand Jury Panel, Lake Como, Italy
A’ Design Award Grand Jury Panel brings together the World’s leading design professionals, prominent academics, influential press members and leading experts in industry to recognize, cherish and value good design products, projects and services.
2019 Honorable Mention by the International Design Awards, IDA
2019/2020 Honorable Mention by the International Design Awards, IDA, under the category of Architectural Design, for our Micro-housing development project in the city of San Francisco.
2019 Winner of the London International Creative Awards
LEONOEL is a San Francisco based sustainable fashion label that launched in 2019 intersecting design, science, and technology, contributing to the transformation of the fashion industry by inserting digital design in the process and striving to achieve the smallest environmental footprint throughout the entire life cycle of garments.
2019 Mill Valley Private Residence Wins Honorable Mention by the London International Creative Competition
Our Mill Valley Private Residence project receives an Honorable Mention from the London International Creative Awards.
Modest in scale and small in footprint, the 800 square-foot single-family residence located in Mill Valley, California, explores sustainability, materiality, and compact spatial planning, characterized by a minimal hyperrectangular form which informs the interior. Elements of volume, light, proportion, and materiality are orchestrated to respond to the project’s unique compact spatial challenges, echoing the juxtaposition of intimacy and openness.
2019 Micro Housing Development Project, International Design Awards, IDA
The proposal tackles the problem of housing in the city of San Francisco, by carefully studying it through the lens of urban planning, environmental sustainability, social and psychological behavioral patterns and opens a new dialogue towards a more sustainable future inclusive of the many layers of individuals that help enrich our cities. The project is currently in conceptual phase of design with various micro unit configurations and facades in conceptual analysis.
2019 A’ Design Award Grand Jury Panel, Lake Como, Italy
A’ Design Award Grand Jury Panel brings together the World’s leading design professionals, prominent academics, influential press members and leading experts in industry to recognize, cherish and value good design products, projects and services.
The award is a source of inspiration for award-winning designers, artists, architects, brands and design agencies and recognizes excellent and original design work from across the globe.
Reach out to us
We’d love to hear from you.
San Francisco
680 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA
General Inquiries: creative@demirchelie.com