Founded in 1980 by Harvard-educated architect Brenda A. Levin, the urban planning and architecture firm, Levin & Associates, received worldwide attention early in the decade for its revitalizing historic preservation work on some of Los Angeles' most-beloved landmarks. In the intervening 20 years, the firm's profound concern for enhancing urban memory and the humanity of a project has positioned it to be an active problem solver in the issues and neighborhoods of a complex city and region. The scope of Levin & Associates work includes urban design and master planning, large-scale renovation and adaptive re-use of historic buildings, and the design of new institutional, commercial, and multi-family housing facilities. Geographically, the firm's project sites blanket Southern California. Its renovation and adaptive re-use work has included the James Oviatt, Fine Arts, and Bradbury buildings, the Grand Central and Chapman markets, Pellessier Building and Wiltern Theater, and the seismic rehabilitation of City Hall. In process are the renovation of Griffith Observatory and the Frank Lloyd Wright buildings at Barnsdall Park. Although primarily intact, all of these buildings suffered from serious neglect and damage prior to renovation. Levin & Associates introduces innovative, cost-efficient solutions to revitalize these structures for viable re-use. Among the legendary architects on whose designs the firm has worked are Frank Lloyd Wright, Rudolph Schindler, Myron Hunt, Gordon Kaufmann and John Parkinson. These projects have provided the firm with an opportunity to master the intricacies and nature of the details and materials of design and construction. The first of these notable landmark projects was the renovation of a 1928 office building and ground-level haberdashery, The Oviatt. It helped to catalyze the preservation movement in Los Angeles, as did the highly-praised transformation of the green terra-cotta-clad Pellessier Building and Wiltern Theater. In a city defined by boom and suburban expansion, the firm found itself among the urban revitalization pioneers who were able to restore life to parts of the city that nearly everyone had written off. For twenty years the firm's designs have built upon the existing context, responding to the site by understanding the life of the street, museum or campus. This philosophy is evident in its urban design and streetscape planning projects throughout Southern California, including Old Pasadena, Barnsdall Art Park, Hollywood and Vine, Seventh Street and the Broadway theatre district as well as in its designs of educational, cultural, and affordable housing facilities.