MILWAUKEE — On Seattle’s urban waterfront, the firm of Weiss/Manfredi Architecture / Landscape / Urbanism put nature back where industry had erased it. In 2002, the firm designed an internationally recognized Olympic Sculpture Park for the Seattle Art Museum that incorporates four ecological environments.
Now the firm has won the 2013 Urban Edge Award, given by UWM’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning.
This $50,000 award recognizes excellence in urban design and the ability of individuals to create major, positive change within the public realm. It honors an internationally recognized design professional or firm whose work brings fresh, innovative and effective thinking to the realm of urban design.
Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi are the proprietors of the New York City-based multidisciplinary practice known for its integration of architecture, art, infrastructure and landscape design. Weiss/Manfredi received the Academy Award in Architecture given annually by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. They also have won the New York City AIA Gold Medal of Honor.
Their Olympic Sculpture Park was the first North American project to be awarded Harvard University Graduate School of Design’s Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design and was a category winner at the World Architecture Festival.
The firm has been featured in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Sao Paulo Biennial, the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the National Building Museum, Harvard University, and the Essen Design Center in Germany.
The UWM School of Architecture and Urban Planning introduced the biennial Urban Edge Award, funded by the Wisconsin Preservation Fund Inc. and the law firm of Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren, in 2006. Previous recipients of the award include Julie Bargmann (D.I.R.T Studio), Elizabeth Diller (Diller Scofidio + Renfro) and Herbert Dreiseitl (Atelier Dreiseitl).
Weiss and Manfredi will visit SARUP in spring 2013 to co-teach a studio course with UWM Assistant Professor Karl Wallick.
(CONTACT: Karl Wallick, 414-229-5337, wallick@uwm.edu)