Since founding their New York City practice in 1989, Michael Manfredi and Marion Weiss have built a reputation for sensitively rethinking the relationship between buildings and their surroundings. Their firm statement describes a commitment to breaking down “disciplinary distinctions between architecture, art, ecology, landscape architecture, engineering, and urban planning” in order to enable the creation of “new paradigms for contemporary settings.”

For their Current Work lecture, Manfredi and Weiss will discuss projects including:

• • The US Embassy Complex in New Delhi, an update to an Edward Durell Stone–designed compound that spans 28 acres.
  • Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, whose design transformed a loose collection of buildings into a unified campus.
  • Hunters Point South Waterfront Park, an innovative public space designed to test new ideas about sustainability.
    
  • La Brea Tar Pits Redesign and Expansion, the reimagining of the world’s only active paleontological research site in a major urban area.
  • Tsai CITY Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale University, a new beacon for university-wide interdisciplinary collaboration.

Michael Manfredi received a BArch from the University of Notre Dame and an MArch at Cornell University. He is a senior design critic/expert-in-residence at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

Marion Weiss received an undergraduate architecture degree from the University of Virginia and an MArch from Yale University. She currently serves as the Graham Chair Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design.

Both are fellows of the American Institute of Architects and Academicians of the National Academy of Design.

In 2018, WEISS/MANFREDI received Cooper Hewitt’s National Design Award for Architecture. The firm has also won the Tau Sigma Delta Gold Medal, the New York AIA Gold Medal, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Architecture, and, most recently, the 2020 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture.

The lecture will be followed by a conversation with J. Meejin Yoon, co-founding principal of Höweler + Yoon Architecture and dean of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University.

Support

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

The event is co-sponsored by The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union.