Spring 2024 Alumni News

Norman Foster (MArch ’62) won Architecture Sarasota’s Philip Hanson Hiss Award, recognizing “pioneers of innovative design.” The award will be presented in March at the Revere Quality House, designed by Paul Rudolph and Ralph Twitchell.

Peter MacPartland (BArch ’70, MArch ’73) and his firm, Elm City Architects, were the Design Architects for the recently completed Nancy Hursey Educational and Student Center (also named Camp St. Ann), in the Soroti Region of Uganda. The project includes the design of dormitory buildings for boys and girls, a student center with classrooms, and a chapel with bell tower.

Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk (MArch ’74, DFAH ’23) is the recipient of the 2024 AIA/ACSA Topaz Medallion for Architectural Education. The award is the highest honor for those who teach architecture and is “presented to an individual who has had a significant impact on architectural education and the discipline and practice of architecture.” Dean Deborah Berke and former dean Robert A.M. Stern (MArch ’65) received the award in 2022 and 2017, respectively. Plater-Zyberk is commended specifically for her teaching record at the University of Miami since 1979, including her 18-year tenure as dean there. The committee notes that Plater-Zyberk “transformed the teaching of architecture by ceaselessly promoting walkable and resilient design, and integrated her students into projects that build community and support well-being.”

Alexander Gorlin (MArch ’80) is the editor, with Victoria Newhouse, of the forthcoming book Housing the Nation: Social Equity, Architecture, and the Future of Affordable Housing to be published by Rizzoli in March 2024. The book tackles America’s affordable-housing crisis through a series of essays across four subject areas and case study projects from 14 firms. Alexander Gorlin Architects received the 2023 Best Downstate Residence of the Year award from the New York State Association for Affordable Housing, for the design of El Borinquen Residence, in the Bronx.

McBride Architects, founded by Nate McBride (MArch ‘82) in 1983 is celebrating its 40th year. The firm has designed single family homes throughout the country from Maine to California as well as the renovation of apartments, townhouses, and lofts in New York City. Parallel to custom residential design, the firm has designed art galleries, artists’ studios, museum and gallery exhibitions, as well as private museums for art collectors.

Robert L. Bostwick (March ’85), managing partner at Bostwick Design Partnership, was recently awarded the Charles Marr Citation by the AIA Ohio Foundation. The honor was established to recognize individuals whose commitment to the profession is exemplary and who promote the foundation’s mission of fostering academic excellence in Ohio’s five schools of architecture. Robert has served 11 years on the AIA Ohio Foundation Board of Trustees and has contributed generously to the foundation’s scholarship fund during his tenure.

Jennifer Groman (BA ’87) left NASA late in 2022 to join the General Services Administration as the Assistant Commissioner for Project Delivery responsible for GSA’s large construction program, which showcases many award-winning buildings through the Design Excellence program. GSA has a large portfolio of buildings across the country and is striving to meet new sustainability goals and a net-zero inventory by 2045.

On October 18, 2023, Claire Weisz (MArch ’89) and Farida Abu-Bakare, of WXY, Jerome Haferd (MArch ’10), and Victor Body-Lawson presented on their winning entry in the Africatown International Design Idea Competition at an Architectural League event hosted by the Pratt Institute. This effort was inspired by the discovery of the Clotilda, the last known ship to transport enslaved Africans to the United States, and asked teams to envision a revived Africatown, Alabama, including new tourism infrastructure, housing, and green space.

Elias Messinas (MArch ’92) recently authored the book Το Συναγώι (The Synagogue), published by Infognomon. The book recounts the histories of synagogues in Greece and the communities they house in Athens, Thessaloniki, Arta, Preveza, Kastoria, Ioannina, Trikala, Xanthi, Komotini, Didymoteicho, and the island of Kos. Messinas has spent the better part of three decades researching and documenting these buildings and their custodians.

Ghiora Aharoni (MArch ’01) completed the Noah Menorah, an assemblage sculpture combining vintage silver bird ornaments with an antique Sephardic menorah and a Moroccan table-tray. The sculpture is intended as a symbol of hope and conviviality.

Atticus LeBlanc (BA ’02) was featured in a New York Times profile on his company, PadSplit, which matches potential tenants for rooming houses, rented out by the week. PadSplit, founded in 2017, now operates in 18 cities, creating more affordable options within existing housing stock.

Ioana Barac (MArch ’03), principal at Atelier Cue, completed the public art installation Currents for Darien Commons, in Noroton Heights, Connecticut, last summer. Fabricated in collaboration with ornament sculptor William Jelley, of Bloomerstudio, the work builds on the legacy of their mentor, Kent Bloomer, and on their large portfolio of collaborations. Currents celebrates marine life and movement through shimmering hand-hammered shapes shifting in color with the changing light. The sculpture is conceived in the ancestral tradition of patterns-that-connect and reveal the energies and beauty of the cosmos. Ioana dedicated the installation of the piece to her late son, Victor I. Moraru, a student of marine biology and lifelong lover of the ocean.

Will Tims (MArch ’03) recently renovated the Norumbega, an inn in Camden, Maine. Built in 1886 and designed by G. B. Jennings, the building was fully renovated with each of its 11 rooms updated in a contemporary take on classic American interiors. All of the historical details and stained-oak millwork were kept, but the bathrooms were updated, air-conditioning was introduced, a new bar and kitchen were installed, and the furniture and decor were refreshed. The inn reopened on Memorial Day weekend 2023. Tims previously worked on the design and development of two hotels with Tishman Hotels in New York.

Derek Hoeferlin (MArch ‘05) released his book Way Beyond Bigness: The Need for a Watershed Architecture (Applied Research + Design Publishing, 2023). It is the first comprehensive analysis of water-based infrastructural challenges across the Mississippi, Mekong, and Rhine river basins and includes a chapter by Anthony Acciavatti, Diana Balmori Assistant Professor. Hoeferlin is currently associate professor and chair of the Landscape Architecture program at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University, in St. Louis.

GRT Architects, founded by Rustam Mehta (MArch ’08) and Tal Schori (MArch ’10), completed the design of Cucina Alba, an Italian restaurant at the base of Thomas Heatherwick’s Lantern House, in New York, and Alba Accanto, located next door.

Designed by Light and Air Architecture, the firm of Shane Neufeld (MArch ’09), the Z House in Clinton Hill was featured as “House of the Month” in the July issue of Architectural Record. The renovation project was cited for its eponymous ability to bring light and air deep into typically dark spaces of Brooklyn brownstones. At the project’s center is a new “switchback” stair that integrates the house vertically and horizontally, carving out the existing structure in order to shape dynamic sightlines that connect inhabitants in new and exciting ways.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced that Peterson Rich Office, founded by Miriam Peterson (MArch ’09) and Nathan Rich (MArch ’08), has won a competition to design new special exhibition spaces for the Costume Institute, as well as dining and retail spaces. The office will also design a new street-level entrance at 83rd Street and Fifth Avenue. Beyer Blinder Belle Architects will be the architects of record.

The Office of Things (OOT), led by Lane Rick (BA ’08, MArch ’12), Can Vu Bui (MArch ’12), Vincent Calabro (MArch ’12), JT Bachman (MArch ’12), and Katie Stranix (MArch ’14), partnered with Akima Brackeen, an independent practitioner and UIUC assistant professor, and two IIT students, Emily Duong and Michael Graham, for the Chicago Sukkah Design Festival.

David Andrew Tasman (MArch ’12) is contributed to Emerging Ecologies: Architecture and the Rise of Environmentalism, on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York until January 20, 2024. The show is the first major museum exhibition to survey the relationship between architecture and the environmental movement in the United States. Tasman and his studio researched and built large-scale models to bring several historic projects to life. This is Tasman’s second museum contribution in New York and follows on his 2018 design collaboration with artist Kevin Beasley (MFA ’12) on a soundproof glass chamber, A view of a landscape: A cotton gin motor, 2012-18, exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art and named by ARTnews as one of the most important artworks of the 2010s. The project is featured in A View of a Landscape, a 300-page monograph on the artist released earlier this year by the Renaissance Society.

Brittany Utting (MArch ’14) published the edited volume Architectures of Care: From the Intimate to the Common (Routledge, 2023). The book explores how spaces of care shape our affective, material, and social forms. Utting authored the chapter “Field Stations for a Future Climate” with Daniel Jacobs (MArch ’14), on reversing the colonial history of the field station into renewed spaces of world-making based on their associated practices of ecological observation, restoration, and community land stewardship.

Anna Bokov (PhD ’17) authored Lessons from the Social Condensers: 101 Soviet Workers’ Clubs and Spaces for Mass Assembly (gta Verlag, 2023). The book collects examples of avant-garde experiments for public assembly into an illustrated portfolio with archival documents and descriptions. With a preface by Philip Ursprung and a comprehensive explanatory introduction by Bokov, the portfolio is well-contextualized within the history of the Soviet avant-garde. Research and images from the book were transformed into an exhibition at ETH Zürich in May. The exhibition will be traveling to destinations in the United States.

Work by Garrett Hardee O’Neal (MArch ’17), Davis Butner (MArch ’19), and Zach Felder (MArch ’23) was exhibited in the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art’s juried show Enduring Beauty: Works from Emerging Practitioners of the Classical Tradition, organized in conjunction with the ICAA’s National Conference. Taking place at the historic Aiken-Rhett House in partnership with the Historic Charleston Foundation, the group exhibition was on view from November 3 to 26, 2023. Students and young professionals 35 years old and younger submitted works inspired by the classical tradition for consideration.

Martin Man (MArch ’19) wrote the essay “Looking for Land,” about urban development as part of the Lantau Tomorrow Vision and in Hong Kong more generally, for e-flux Architecture as part of Accumulation, a project edited by Daniel A. Barber (MED ’05).

Katharine Blackman (MArch ‘20) designed a competition-winning COVID memorial for Southern New Hampshire University. It is organized around a series of concrete arches that frame a contemplative winding pathway along the edge of the woods.

Mari Kroin (MArch ’21) received an Independent Projects Grant from the Architectural League of New York and the New York State Council on the Arts for her project “The Subway Color Archive.” Focusing on the 8th Avenue Subway line in New York City as it approaches its centennial, Kroin samples the thickly layered chroma history of the line’s columns, platforms, and other surfaces. Along with interviews, events, and surveys, this color reconstruction will lead to the creation of archive-inspired print memorabilia.

Tong Hsu (MArch ’24) was selected for the 2023 Kohn Pederson Fox Traveling Fellowship in April, proposing to “investigate informal housing, incremental building, and vernacular architecture in Mexico City and Oaxaca.” Hsu explored Mexico through sketching and photography and then worked as an intern at TEN Arquitectos. Hsu’s research led to a comparative analysis of Taipei, his hometown.

Nicole Niava (MArch ’24) received the 2023 John Belle Travel Fellowship. Her proposal was selected from a field of 30 student applications from 16 schools.

YSoA PhD students swept the Graham Foundation’s Carter Manny Awards this year. Aaron Tobey (PhD ’23) received the 2023 Carter Manny Writing Award for his dissertation “Drawing Management: Corporate Organization, International Practice, and the Making of Computer-Aided Design,” on how computer-aided design software and practices common today were constructed along with transformations in the internal organization and international geography of architectural production at several large American architectural firms around information management and the design of design processes from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s. Jia Weng (PhD ’24) received the 2023 Carter Manny Research Award for her dissertation “Environmental Conduits in China: Pipe Politics, Fluid Management, and the Rise of the Global Airscape,” which investigates the evolution of heating and cooling conduits in China through three episodes in the twentieth century and how information-controlled material flows gave rise to a global air-scape that generated thermal inequalities between kinetic elites and migrant workers through architecture.

Izzy Kornblatt (PhD ’27) continues to write for Architectural Record. Among his most recent articles is the in-depth review “The Las Vegas Sphere and the Promise of a New Earth.”

The Yale Women in Architecture hosted a Fall Meetup at the Bryant Park Hotel on October 25. The group met in January to mark National Mentorship Month, providing insight into mentorship tools from Cross Campus to foster connections between alumni and current students. The student chapter hosted a panel discussion on families in practice at the school on February 2.

The MArch I Class of 2003 held a minimalist and fun 20th anniversary reunion in October. Activities included joining in on the opening reception for this year’s Building Project, visiting the school, and being welcomed by classmates who teach and practice in New Haven.