School Notes: School of Architecture
May/June 2013

Award honors lifetime contributions

The University of Notre Dame has chosen architecture professor Thomas H. Beeby ’65MArch as the recipient of its Richard H. Driehaus Prize for 2013. The Driehaus Prize recognizes lifetime contributions to traditional, classical, and sustainable architecture and urbanism in the modern world and is the most significant recognition for classicism in the contemporary built environment.

Chairman emeritus of Hammond Beeby Rupert Ainge Architects, Beeby spent over 40 years as the firm’s director of design, leading projects such as Yale’s Bass Library and the US Federal Building and courthouse in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. From 1985 to 1991 Beeby was dean of the Yale School of Architecture. He was elected to the College of Fellows of the AIA in 1991.

Canadian government honors alumna

The Governor General of Canada, David Johnston, has named Toronto architect Marianne McKenna ’76MArch an Officer of the Order of Canada, “for her contributions as an architect, designing structures that enrich the public realm.” Similar to the Kennedy Center Honors for artists in the United States, the award recognizes Canadians for a lifetime of outstanding achievement, dedication to the community, and service to the nation. A founding partner of Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg (KPMB) Architects, McKenna is responsible for numerous innovative projects, including the Royal Conservatory of Music’s acclaimed Koerner Concert Hall in Toronto; an integrated vertical campus of business, engineering, and visual arts at Concordia University in Montreal; and the environmentally sustainable Jackson-Triggs Winery in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

AIA’s Latrobe Prize awarded to faculty

Bimal Mendis ’98, ’02MArch, assistant dean of architecture and critic, and Joyce Hsiang ’99, ’03MArch, critic and Yale College lecturer, were awarded the AIA College of Fellows 2013 Latrobe Prize for their proposal, “The City of 7 Billion.” Mendis and Hsiang are partners in New Haven–based Plan B Architecture & Urbanism, LLC. Their project will explore the impact of population growth and resource consumption on the built and natural environment, considering the entire world as a single urban entity. The grant, named for architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe, is awarded biennially.