Based out of Los Angeles, CA, KAA Design is an award-winning, leading-edge, residential design firm led by Founding Partner Grant C. Kirkpatrick, FAIA, and Partner Duan H.M. Tran, AIA. With a talented team of over 30 experienced multidisciplinary designers, the firm brings a unique level of specialization toward design-forward endeavors.
KAA Design’s work is the result of an intimate and highly collaborative design process alongside each discerning client. With an integrated architecture and landscape architecture expertise, the firm brings a design philosophy founded on the importance of marrying each client’s program and lifestyle with the unique characteristics offered by the site.
To enhance the client’s design experience, the firm utilizes a design technology platform that leverages several high-end visualization tools such as 3D print modeling, photorealistic renderings, video animations, and virtual reality during the process.
Over the past 30 years, KAA Design has won numerous AIA awards in the categories of design. The firm’s work has also been extensively published in several media outlets, including Architectural Digest, Interiors, Luxe, Ocean Home, House Beautiful, Coastal Living, Sunset Magazine, The New York Times, The LA Times, and The Robb Report. Several monographs have been published on the firm’s design philosophy and work, most recently California Contemporary.
With significant residential commissions now in Aspen, Las Vegas, Washington DC, Hawaii, the Bahamas, and Dubai, KAA Design continues to extend its Southern California roots to further advance the very best aspects of the California lifestyle through contemporary architecture and design.
We insist on authenticity in our work, and honesty & accountability in all we do.
We believe that many voices bring richness to our endeavor.
We consider it our duty to foster awareness of the value of design.
We maintain that beauty is essential to human happiness.
Work hard, play hard.
Our creative vision, combined with the individual talents and experience of our long-term leaders, brings a unique design perspective to our clients – one that seeks to elevate the daily rituals of their lives from the mundane to the sublime.
310.821.1400
info@kaadesigngroup.com
KAA Design
12921 W. Washington Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90066
A third generation Californian, Grant Kirkpatrick, FAIA, draws his energy and inspiration from his home state’s optimism and progressive ideals. Since its founding over 30 years ago, Grant has been the visionary force behind KAA Design Group and he and his team strive everyday to elevate the human spirit through the benefits and authenticity of warm contemporary residential design.
Raised in Palos Verdes, Grant earned his Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Southern California and became a licensed architect at age 24. His entrepreneurial spirit and passion for design led him to found KAA Design just a few years later in 1988. Since then, the firm has completed projects for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Christie’s auction house, Hugo Boss stores across the nation, master plans and renovations for the Jonathan Club, Santa Monica Beach Club, and Manhattan Country Club, and other award-winning commercial and hospitality projects. The firm now focuses exclusively on custom homes, having notably worked with high-profile clients like Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, Kirk Kerkorian, Matt Damon, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and The Pritzker Family, among others. Coastal retreats, city-view estates, and distinctive vacation properties for a broad range of passionate clients round out the firm’s impressive portfolio.
Community service and academics are a core part of Grant’s practice. He serves as the Board Chair for non-profit ArtworxLA and on the Board of Councilors for the USC School of Architecture. Grant teaches at the annual XED Executive Education Program at USC and frequently lectures on topics surrounding Southern California residential architecture. In 2021, Grant was awarded the USC Architectural Guild Distinguished Alumni Award along with 4 other extraordinary individuals. His community involvement has included numerous industry appointments such as two-terms as a planning commissioner for the City of Manhattan Beach, membership on the Bel-Air Architecture Review Board, and juror for the Santa Barbara AIA Design Awards.Over the past three decades, KAA Design has won numerous AIA awards, the “Good Design is Good Business” award from Architectural Record, the 2009 PDC Stars of Design award for Architecture, Azure Magazine’s “Best Product” award, as well as several Los Angeles Design Council, LA Business Journal, and City of Beverly Hills Architecture awards. The firm’s work has been extensively published in over 30 design magazines and books including Architectural Digest, House Beautiful, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Coastal Living, Sunset Magazine, and The Robb Report.
Outside day-to-day operations of KAA Design, Grant has developed a comprehensive line of outdoor furniture for Design Within Reach and a line of prefab homes. He enjoys spending his time off tending to his vineyard in Central California. Grant and his family are longtime residents of Manhattan Beach.
Follow me on Instagram: @grantkirkpatrick
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As a Partner of the firm, Duan’s vision and leadership extend to both management and project design. His focus on firm wide initiatives related to its organizational growth, business development, and long term strategic planning, guide the firm’s ability to leverage its over 30-year history with a nimbleness required to retain its position on the frontlines of an ever changing industry and clientele.
Duan also maintains a leading presence on all aspects of design for many of the firm’s most notable projects and discerning clients. With an artistic sensibility rooted in modern composition and form, he enjoys exploring the intersections of his ideals in collaboration with an engaged and passionate client through the process of designing their home. Several of his projects have been recognized by the AIA, as well as having been featured in several regional, national, and international publications including Architectural Digest, Luxe, and the Robb Report.
A native Ohioan, Duan received his undergraduate degree from Miami (OH), and graduate degrees in both Architecture and Historic Preservation from the University of Southern California. Prior to joining KAA Design, Duan’s professional career included several distinguished residential and hospitality firms in both Ohio and Washington DC.
Duan is a licensed Architect and member of the AIA. He is also a member of the prestigious Leaders of Design Council, the Board of Directors for A+D Museum in Los Angeles, and Advisory Board for Miami (OH)’s College of Creative Arts. Duan has also been invited to serve on several academic design juries, as well as a guest panelist for several design and industry media events.
Outside of the office, Duan and his wife enjoy finding time to travel, all awhile keeping up with their three active daughters in Culver City.
Lisa Copeland was made in Korea, imported to the United States and raised as a Nebraskan. She received her Bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University and a Master’s in Business Administration from Kellogg School of Management.
Lisa joined the firm with over 15 years of experience as a Chief Financial Officer providing strategy, leadership and financial risk management. Prior to joining the firm, Lisa worked in the banking, construction and real estate industries. She served as a former bank examiner for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and a Business Integration Consultant for Accenture (formerly Andersen Consulting). She has traveled extensively throughout her career and spent a year working abroad in Zurich, Switzerland.
Lisa oversees the firm’s operational and financial reporting and processes, provides long and short term financial planning and budgeting, develops the firm’s financial strategies, and provides risk management for all of the KAA Design Group’s entities. Her passion for finance and accounting has led her to participate and assist in forming a CFO Roundtable group which is comprised of other local design firms within the Los Angeles area with the united goal to create Best Practices within our industry.
Meghan grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, surrounded and inspired by vernacular, modernist, and historic university architecture all set within beautiful scenery. Constantly seeking to observe and create, she’s pursued a number of interests across the design spectrum – art, product design, furniture, woodworking, ui/web and graphic design, architecture – as well as archaeology and science.
She received Bachelor degrees in both Industrial Design and Art & Design from the NCSU College of Design in 2002. Finally embracing that her childhood tendencies to sketch, build balsa models, and draw floor plans were signs of a unifying passion across design disciplines, she returned to NCSU and received a Master of Architecture in 2007. She is a licensed Architect in the State of North Carolina, a member of the AIA, and certified by NCARB.
Meghan moved to California and joined KAA Design in 2011, where she has contributed to the design and construction of a number of custom residential projects. In addition to her role on projects, she oversees the BIM and design workflow initiatives within the firm and promotes mentorship and collaboration. She was a Speaker at the 2016 AIA National Convention in Philadelphia, with a presentation on integrating BIM into the design process. Meghan brings a big picture perspective as well as attention to detail to every project, and constantly strives for design excellence.
Michael was educated at Salisbury State University in Salisbury, Maryland, where he received his Bachelor’s degree in Geography and Regional Planning. His enthusiasm for landscape architecture was cultivated while serving as curator of plants records at the campus arboretum. This burgeoning interest in landscape design led him to seek a Masters in Landscape Architecture, which he received from California State Polytechnic University in Pomona. As a professor at the University of Southern California, Michael’s passion for Southern California landscapes and blurring the boundary between architecture and landscape was galvanized.
McGowan joined KAA in 2011, overseeing the design and implementation of a broad range of custom residential, commercial and institutional landscapes. In addition to his design work on numerous estate residential landscapes, some of Michael’s notable projects include: The Eastern Columbia Building, TreePeople Center for Community Forestry, Santa Monica Village and One Santa Fe.
Michael often attends student jury critiques, and is a member of the California State Polytechnic University, Department of Landscape Architecture Professional Advisory Board. He is also an avid screen printer, inspired by the attention to detail of Japanese woodblock printing, and the exploration of new printing techniques extant in today’s street art.
Since relocating to Southern California and joining the firm in 2001, Todd has served as Job Captain and Project Manager on a broad range of KAA projects. Originally from Connecticut, Todd has enjoyed the unique design opportunities offered by Southern California living, and has collaborated on numerous noteworthy beachfront homes and estate properties.
Though certain of a life-long career in architecture, Todd has pursued a diverse design education earning a Bachelor of Architecture and a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Rhode Island School of Design. Before graduating in 1999, Todd further expanded his studies as a member of RISD’s year-long European Honors Program based in Rome. Todd also worked in Boston on a range of historic and traditional residences further enhancing KAA’s cross-disciplinary approach to design.
Esther is a Southern California native who hasn’t strayed far from home. Born and raised in the Culver City area, she knew she wanted to be an architect by the time she was six, when her parents built the family home. Esther has always believed in Architecture’s profound effect on the human experience through the sense of space, and designing a family home is the most intimate practice of design. Living in Southern California and raised by a general contractor also gave her exposure to a variety of architectural typologies as well as hands on experience with the pragmatic challenges of the build.
Esther is a licensed architect in California and a member of the AIA, having received a Bachelor’s of Architecture from Woodbury University with a minor in Psychology. Interests outside of Architecture include singing, woodworking, hiking, camping and exploring the National Parks. She is currently on a mission to explore all 63 of the National Parks with her husband. She also is a proud mother and lover of animals.
