#243 -MICHAEL MANFREDI, Architect and Co-Founder of WEISS / MANFREDI
SUMMARY
This week Michael Manfredi, Architect and Co-Founder of WEISS / MANFREDI joins David and Marina of FAME Architecture & Design to discuss balancing the teaching, research, and practice of architecture, studying with Colin Rowe, growing up in Rome, working with clients, questioning building components, understand light in architecture, architects as generalists, designing projects internationally, design process, and more. Enjoy!
ABOUT MICHAEL
Michael Manfredi is co-founder of WEISS/MANFREDI Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism based in New York City and is currently a Senior Design Critic at Harvard University. His multidisciplinary firm is at the forefront of architectural design practices that are redefining the relationships between landscape, architecture, infrastructure, and art. The Olympic Sculpture Park exemplifies this cross-disciplinary design approach and the project has been recognized internationally through museum exhibitions and design awards. Time Magazine identified the park as one of the top 10 projects in the world, the World Architecture Festival selected the project as the winner in the Nature Category, I.D. Magazine awarded it the highest Environment Design Award, and it was the first project in North America to win Harvard University's Veronica Rudge Green Prize.
WEISS/MANFREDI is a recipient of the Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2020 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture, the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Architecture, and was named one of North America's "Emerging Voices" by the Architectural League of New York. The firm has also been honored with the New York AIA Gold Medal and with the Tau Sigma Delta Gold Medal, awarded to one individual or firm in the world each year. The firm's projects have been featured in exhibitions at the Museum of Modem Art, the Venice Architectural Biennale, the Sao Paulo Biennale of International Architecture and Design, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, the National Building Museum, Harvard University, the International Landscape Architecture Biennale in Barcelona, and the Design Centre in Essen, Germany. Princeton Architectural Press has published three monographs on their work including their most recent book, PUBLIC NATURES: Evolutionary Infrastructures.
Michael Manfredi was born in Trieste, Italy, and grew up in Rome. He completed his undergraduate education in the United States and received his Master of Architecture at Cornell University where he studied with Colin Rowe. He won the Paris Prize, was a Cornell Fellow, and was awarded an Eidlitz Fellowship. He has taught design studios at Yale University, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, Cornell, and, most recently, at Harvard University. He is a founding board member of the Van Alen Institute, is currently a board member for the Storefront for Art and Architecture, and has been a member of the Advisory Council of Cornell's College of Architecture, Art and Planning. He is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects and was recently inducted into the National Academy of Design.
