Architect Paul Katz Passes Away at Age 57

Renowned architect and Scarsdale resident Paul Katz passed away on November 20, 2014 at the age of 57. He was the President and Managing Principal at Kohn, Pederson Fox (KPF), a global architectural firm with 670 employees. Katz died of septic shock at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital where he was being treated for cancer. Funeral services for him were held at Temple Israel Center in White Plains.

Katz lived in Greenacres with his wife Ziva Freiman and children Jonathan and Hannah. Jonathan is now studying at Oxford and Hannah is a student at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Katz joined KPF in 1984 and is credited with managing the design and construction of some of the largest buildings in the world. Among them are the Shanghai World Financial Center with 101 stories and the 118-story International Commerce Center in Hong Kong. He developed the entertainment and conference center Earls Court in London, refurbished and expanded Covent Garden in London and worked on the master plan for Hudson Yards on the west side of Manhattan which is now being built.

Katz was a native of Cape Town, South Africa where his parents worked for a family-owned construction company, his father as an accountant and his mother running its human resources department. He studied architecture at the University of Cape Town and later at the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, where he received a bachelor of architecture degree in 1982. It was there that he met Ziva Freiman, a fellow South African, who was also studying architecture at the institute. Katz earned a master's degree in architecture at Princeton.

He was also a competitive chess player and played last summer in an exhibition match in the south of France. Donations can be sent to the KPF Foundation for an academic scholarship in his name.