Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum announced that WEISS/MANFREDI Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism has received the prestigious National Design Award for Architecture. The National Design Awards were established in 2000 to celebrate excellence and innovation across design disciplines.
Founded by Marion Weiss and Michael A. Manfredi, Weiss/Manfredi is at the forefront of architectural design practices redefining the relationship between architecture, landscape, infrastructure, and art. The firm forges new connections between city and garden, art and ecology, and infrastructure and intimacy, that are distinctly public in nature.
“We are honored to receive this recognition, and to be included in this incredible list of recipients,” said Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi. “We’re inspired by Cooper Hewitt’s mission to illuminate the far-reaching impact of design excellence and innovation across all disciplines.”
Weiss/Manfredi’s designs are marked by clarity of vision, bold forms, and material innovations. Around the world and across typologies, the firm’s work addresses pressing environmental and social challenges and asserts the importance of design in the public realm.
Projects including Seattle Art Museum: Olympic Sculpture Park, the Women’s Memorial and Education Center at Arlington National Cemetery, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitor Center, the Diana Center at Barnard College, and Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park create new natural connections with the built environment.
The Olympic Sculpture Park was recognized by Time Magazine as one of the top 10 projects in the world when it opened and was the first North American project to win Harvard University’s International V.R. Green Prize in Urban Design. The firm is recognized for projects that encourage interdisciplinary discourse and collaboration while advancing technically complex programs.
These projects include Cornell Tech’s Tata Innovation Center, the Krishna P. Singh Center for Nanotechnology at the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, two projects for the Novartis Campus, and Kent State’s Center for Architecture and Environmental Design.
Current work includes the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India, Phase II of Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park, Tulane University Commons, the Artis—Naples Master Plan for the Kimberly K. Querrey and Louis A. Simpson Cultural Campus, and the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale.
This May, Weiss/Manfredi will debut a new installation in the main exhibition of the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, FREESPACE. Source and photos Courtesy of Weiss/Manfredi.
