Alena Doll

Before Alena Doll visited Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece, Fallingwater, she built it out of Legos. Growing up in a Philadelphia suburb, she and her younger brother spent hours building and tinkering, interests they later shared with children as counselors at Camp Invention. In high school, architecture brought together Alena's enthusiasm for math and art. When the pandemic moved classes online, her final project for a civil engineering and architecture elective was close at hand: measure her family’s house and model it in Revit.

Alena earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Hartford, with a concentration in environmental sustainability. A semester in Florence introduced her to Italian Renaissance architecture, narrow stone streets, and weekends exploring new cities. She loved the experience, though one of her first acts when she came home was to walk barefoot in the grass. Her master’s thesis, a Watershed Education Center, explored how architecture can help visitors understand the natural world around them and earned the Walter Harrison Thesis Prize. Alena also received the 2026 AIA Medal of Academic Excellence. She traveled to San Diego to accept it at the AIA National Convention.

Centerbrook’s diverse projects and emphasis on craft pulled Alena in like a tractor beam. She had studied the curved forms and materials of the Thompson Exhibition Building at Mystic Seaport Museum in college and got to know Andrew Santaniello through a professional practice course he teaches. Since joining Centerbrook, she has contributed to Fairfield University’s Innovation Center and an athletics study for Colgate University.

Outside the office, Alena enjoys hiking, camping, science fiction, and jigsaw puzzles. A former captain of her college’s ultimate frisbee club team, she now plays disc golf with friends. Come holiday time, she designs and builds an increasingly elaborate gingerbread house, making the templates and dough from scratch. She has refined the recipe with extra molasses to boost its structural integrity. Eating it is no longer part of the plan.