| Year | Project | Location | Core Innovation | |------|---------|----------|-----------------| | 2010 | | Albany, NY | Integrated floating wetlands to treat stormwater runoff. | | 2012 | Community Learning Hub | Detroit, MI | Adaptive reuse of a 1920s textile mill into a mixed‑use education center. | | 2014 | Solar‑Powered Co‑Working Space | Portland, OR | Net‑zero energy building using BIPV (Building‑Integrated Photovoltaics). |

These projects earned the firm multiple accolades, including the and the World Architecture Festival (WAF) Future Project Award (2015) . 2.3 Global Expansion – The Southeast Asian Pivot A turning point came in 2016 when the Singapore Ministry of National Development invited Romanis to lead a consultancy for the “Smart Green Districts” program. Her team’s proposal—a modular, prefabricated housing system that combined passive cooling strategies with locally sourced bamboo panels—was selected for pilot implementation in Johor Bahru, Malaysia . The pilot, known as “Bamboo‑Box Housing,” achieved a 40 % reduction in operational energy compared to conventional low‑rise apartments and received the World Sustainable Building Council’s (World SBC) Innovation Award (2018) .

Romanis earned a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Cornell University in 1999, where she was introduced to the concept of “ecological urbanism” through the work of architect‑theorist Peter Calthorpe . A pivotal moment came during a senior‑year studio project that re‑imagined the abandoned Ithaca Commons as a “green corridor” linking the downtown core to the surrounding farmland. The project won the university’s Sustainable Design Competition and caught the eye of a visiting professor from the University of Cambridge , who later invited her to pursue a Master’s degree abroad.