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September 26, 2002
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct. 16 "Campus Rebirth"
Event to Feature Three Women Architects
Involved in Creating Smith's Newest Buildings
Editor's note: Digital photos
of Susan Rodriguez, Marion Weiss and Martha Pilgreen are available.
E-mail Marti Hobbes at mhobbes@smith.edu to request photos.
NORTHAMPTON, Mass.-Designed by three
different architectural firms, three new buildings at Smith College
are in progress: the Brown Fine Arts Center, now partially open;
the Botanic Garden/Lyman Conservatory project, now nearly complete;
and the Smith College Campus Center, now under intense construction.
At 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 16, three women from the firms that
designed these new buildings will come together as a panel to
discuss the recent evolution of the Smith campus as well as general
topics in the practice of architecture and other works from their
portfolios.
The featured speakers will be Susan Rodriguez, a partner with
Polshek Partnership, the architects for the Brown Fine Arts Center;
Marion Weiss, a partner at Weiss/Manfredi Architects, the architects
for the Smith College Campus Center; and Martha A. Pilgreen,
a principal with Perry Dean Rogers|Partners Architects, the architects
for the renovation and expansion of the Botanic Garden's Lyman
Conservatory. Rodriguez and Weiss served as project principals
for their respective works at Smith.
The discussion, titled "Campus Rebirth," is part of
an ongoing lecture series titled "Architecture at Smith:
Buildings, Texts, Contexts." It is free, open to the public
and wheelchair accessible, and will take place in Wright Hall
Auditorium.
Susan Rodriguez is a partner and design principal in Polshek
Partnership. In addition to Smith's Brown Fine Arts Center, Rodriguez's
recent buildings include the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research
Center in Mashantucket, Conn.; the Smithsonian Institution National
Museum of the American Indian Cultural Resources Center in Suitland,
Md.; the New York Botanical Garden International Plant Science
Center in Bronx, N.Y.; an academic building and residence hall
for the Bard Graduate Center for the Decorative Arts in New York
City; and the Heimbold Center for Visual Arts at Sarah Lawrence
College in Yonkers, N.Y.
Rodriguez has taught at the Cornell University College of Architecture,
Art and Planning; the Columbia University Graduate School of
Architecture Planning and Preservation; and the City College
of the City University of New York School of Architecture and
Environmental Studies. She sits on the board of trustees of the
Van Alen Institute: Projects in Public Architecture; the board
of directors of the Architectural League of New York; and the
Cornell University Council for the College of Architecture, Art
and Planning. Rodriguez received a bachelor of architecture degree
from Cornell University College of Architecture, Art and Planning
and a master of science in architecture and building design from
the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning
and Preservation. She joined Polshek Partnership in 1985.
Marion Weiss is a partner at Weiss/Manfredi Architects.
Prior to establishing the partnership, she was a designer at
Cesar Pelli and Associates and a project architect at Mitchell/Giurgola
Architects. She 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 received her bachelor of science in architecture
from the University of Virginia.
She is currently an associate professor of architecture at the
University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Fine Arts and
has taught at Yale, the University of Maryland and Cornell University.
She has lectured and exhibited her work at a number of institutions,
including the Smithsonian, RISD, The Urban Center and the Universities
of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Columbia and Yale.
Weiss is a recipient of the national AAUW Outstanding Emerging
Scholar Award and author of "Underestimated Sites"
a chapter in "The Sex of Architecture." She has also
served as a juror on the TKTS international competition, the
Gabrielle Prize competition and the annual Progressive Architecture
Design Awards.
Martha A. Pilgreen is director of architecture at Perry
Dean Rogers|Partners Architects. She has led the programming,
design and development of numerous educational facilities, including
projects with Harvard University, Dickinson College and Hollins
University. Working in the field for 22 years, she is a graduate
of the Georgia Institute of Technology and holds a master's degree
in architecture from Harvard's Graduate School of Design.
Some of Pilgreen's current and recent academic projects include
the master planning and design of the new Franklin W. Olin College
of Engineering; 60 Oxford Street, an advanced computer and information
technology building at Harvard University; Waidner Library at
Dickinson College; Wyndham Robertson Library at Hollins University;
the addition to the Morgan Library at Colorado State University
in Fort Collins; the master planning and design of the new town
center and facilities for the Milton Hershey School in Hershey,
Penn.; and the Upper School Expansion of the Shady Hill School
in Cambridge, Mass. She is working in association with Diller
and Scofidio on Boston's new Institute for Contemporary Art.
The "Campus Rebirth" discussion coincides with "The
Future of Smith: Architectural Works in Progress, " an exhibition
of architectural drawings and models of the Brown Fine Arts Center,
the Campus Center and the addition to the Lyman Conservatory,
as well as significant recent updates by the firm of Towers|Golde
to the Smith campus' original landscape master plan. The exhibition
will be on display Oct. 14 Nov. 20 in the Jannotta Gallery
of the Brown Fine Arts Center, located on Elm Street at Bedford
Terrace.
The exhibition is free, open to the public and wheelchair accessible.
Gallery hours are 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Thursday;
8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday; 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday; and noon
to midnight Sunday.
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