 Karen Fairbanks is a founding partner of Marble Fairbanks, where her work includes educational, institutional, and residential projects. Prior to forming Marble Fairbanks, she worked on award-winning educational and institutional projects at firms in New York City and Boston. Karen received her Master of Architecture Degree from Columbia University and her Bachelor of Science in Architecture degree from the University of Michigan. Karen Fairbanks is the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Professional Practice in Architecture at Barnard College. She is Chair of the Architecture department, teaching architecture design studios and courses on architecture and technology at Barnard and Columbia Colleges since 1989. 

Karen Fairbanks and Scott Marble, principals at Marble Fairbanks and professors at Columbia University, renovated Slide Library, transforming it from exclusively a library to a student center. 

Glen Oaks Branch Library is an 18,000sf LEED Gold certified building located at the juncture of a commercial area and a residential neighborhood. The building doubles the area of the previous building, providing reading rooms and collections on three floors, community rooms, and computers and digital technologies integrated throughout. A landscaped plaza and exterior reading garden provide seating for the community outside the building. To relate the building to the scale of the residential community and meet zoning requirements, half of the interior spaces are placed below grade. Natural light illuminates that lower level through a two-story atrium and strip skylights in the plaza above. Above grade massing and materials respond to the differing site conditions. The channel glass façade provides a luminous glow in the interiors and transforms the building into a beacon for the neighborhood. A large picture window allows for views into and out of the second floor children’s area while providing a civic identity to the community. On bright days, the word “search” appears on the north façade, moving across the surface as the sun moves across the sky. The graphic pattern on the glass curtain wall at the street level includes the word “search” translated into many of the languages spoken in Glen Oaks. 

Karen Fairbanks and Scott Marble, architects at Marble Fairbanks and professors at Columbia University, discuss their renovations of the Graduate School of Journalism. The architects wanted to create a space that was better suited to the changing needs of today's journalism students and professors. 

 Scott Marble and Karen Fairbanks, from Marble Fairbanks, discuss their collaboration as part of the Client Team with Weiss Manfredi the architects the Nexus Building at Barnard College. 

The architects Karen Fairbanks and Scott Marble talk about the Our Children's Foundation, a non-profit organization which serves as an after school educational and recreational facility for the children of Harlem. The design by Marble Fairbanks consists of the complete renovation of and an addition to a three-story industrial building. The spaces are organized around a new atrium. 

Karen Fairbanks and Scott Marble, principals at Marble Fairbanks and professors at Columbia University, discuss their first renovation in a school at Columbia University. The building was originally a theater, and the architects used digital fabrication to control the acoustics and enable professors to move about the room freely while still being able to be heard. 