Deborah Moelis is a founding member of Handel Architects, and a Certified Passive House Designer.   Ms. Moelis is an internationally recognized expert in Passive House design. She has lectured extensively on the topic, including recent presentations at the National Passive House Canada Conference, National American Institute of Architects convention, Greenbuild DC, nZeb in Wexford, Ireland and the International Passivhaus Institute conference in Vienna, Austria. 

Ms. Moelis has led all of the firm’s Passive House projects. She was Project Manager for The House at Cornell Tech, a 500-bed residence on Cornell Tech’s Roosevelt Island campus in New York City. Upon its completion, it was the largest and tallest building in the world to achieve Certified Passive House status and is now well known as North America’s first successful high rise multifamily Passive House building. Currently, Ms. Moelis is the Principal in Charge of Sendero Verde, a new 650-unit residential building in New York City, which, when complete, will be the largest fully affordable Passive House building in the world as well as the 750-bed dormitory for the University of Toronto Scarborough. She was also Project Manager for the Arbor, a 127-unit building for Columbia University faculty housing.

Previously Ms. Moelis managed the design and construction of Aire, a 42-story 315-unit residential tower on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, as well as the award-winning Millennium Place, a mid-rise 256-unit residential building in the historic Theater District of downtown Boston. She has led numerous teams through successful entitlement processes in NY City, Jersey City, and Boston, MA. Her projects have been extensively published and received numerous awards, including honors from AIANY, the Boston Society of Architects, and the Boston Preservation Alliance.

Prior to joining Handel Architects, Ms. Moelis worked in the New York and London offices of Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates. She received her Bachelor of Science in Both Architecture and Interior Design from the University of Michigan, and Master of Architecture from Columbia University, is licensed in New York and California, and became a Certified Passive House Designer in 2015.