Lecture: Marion Weiss & Michael Manfredi

Public Natures

Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism is at the forefront of architectural design practices that are redefining the relationships between landscape, architecture, infrastructure, and art. The firm's projects are noted for clarity of vision, bold and iconic forms, and material innovation. Named one of North America's "Emerging Voices" by the Architectural League of New York, WEISS/MANFREDI's distinct vision was recognized with the Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Additional honors include the Tau Sigma Delta Gold Medal and the New York AIA Gold Medal. 



The firm's design for the Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park, integrates art, architecture, and ecology in a new model for waterfront development. Exhibited in the "Groundswell" show at The Museum of Modern Art, the project has won a World Architecture Festival Award, I.D. Magazine Environments Award, Progressive Architecture Award, AIA Awards, ASLA Honor Award, EDRA Places Award, and was the first North American project to win Harvard University's International V.R. Green Prize in Urban Design. The award-winning Hunter's Point South Waterfront Park, located on the East River in Queens, New York, recently opened to the public. Surrounded by water on three sides, the integrated park design weaves together infrastructure, landscape, and architecture into a model of urban ecology and a resilient, multi-layered cultural destination. 



WEISS/MANFREDI recently won a national competition with OLIN to redesign the Sylvan Theater, an integrated outdoor amphitheater at the Washington Monument Grounds in Washington, D.C. The firm's new Visitor Center at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, winner of a National ASLA Honor Award, is conceived as a seamless extension of the Garden's path system, offering a new sequence of views into and through the historic Garden. Their Krishna P. Singh Center for Nanotechnology recently opened to the public at the University of Pennsylvania. This state-of-the-art lab facility brings together researchers across disciplines in a welcoming new gateway to campus. Other built works include the Barnard College Diana Center, Museum of the Earth, and the Women's Memorial and Education Center at Arlington National Cemetery. 



The firm has won numerous awards and competitions and has been featured in exhibitions at The Museum of Modem Art, the Venice Architectural Biennale, the São Paulo Biennale of International Architecture and Design, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, the National Building Museum, The International Landscape Architecture Biennale in Barcelona, and the Design Center in Essen, Germany. Princeton Architectural Press has published two monographs on their work entitled WEISS/MANFREDI: Surface/Subsurface and Site Specific: The Work of WEISS/MANFREDI Architects. A new monograph was recently published in Korean and English by Pro Architect and Evolutionary Infrastructures, a Harvard GSD publication, is forthcoming.



Marion Weiss received her Master of Architecture at Yale University, where she won the American Institute of Architects Scholastic Award and the Skidmore, Owings and Merrill Traveling Fellowship. She has taught design studios at Yale University, Cornell University, and since 1991 has been a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania's Penn School of Design where she is currently the Graham Professor of Architecture.



Michael Manfredi received his Master of Architecture at Cornell University where he studied with Colin Rowe. There he won the Paris Prize and the Eidlitz Fellowship. In addition to teaching at Cornell, where he is the Gensler Visiting Professor, he has taught design studios at Yale University, University of Pennsylvania, and Princeton University. He was the founding chairman of the Van Alen Institute and is currently a board member of the Storefront for Art and Architecture.