Michael Manfredi

Design Critic in Urban Planning and Design

Michael A. Manfredi is the co-founder of WEISS/MANFREDI Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism, a multidisciplinary design practice based in New York City.

WEISS/MANFREDI is at the forefront of architectural design practices that are redefining the relationships between landscape, architecture, infrastructure, and art. Award-winning projects such as the Olympic Sculpture Park, Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park, University of Pennsylvania’s Nanotechnology Center, Barnard College’s Diana Center, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitor Center construct reciprocal relationships between city and nature, architecture, and infrastructure. Recent projects include a master plan and mixed-use building for MIT’s Kendall Square, The Tsai Center at Yale University, the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India, and a reimagining of La Brea Tar Pits and Museum in Los Angeles.

Manfredi was born in Trieste, Italy and grew up in Rome. He received his Master of Architecture at Cornell University, where he studied with Colin Rowe. He is a founding member of the Van Alen Institute, a board member of the Storefront for Art and Architecture, and fellow of the Urban Design Forum.

Manfredi has taught at Cornell, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and was the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor at Yale University. He has been honored with the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Architecture, The Academy Award for Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Architectural League’s Emerging Voices Award, Harvard’s International VR Green Urban Design Award, the New York AIA Gold Medal of Honor, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture, and exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Venice Biennale, the Louvre, and the Guggenheim Museum. He is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects and a National Academy inductee.

Princeton Architectural Press has published three monographs on his firm’s work entitled WEISS/MANFREDI: Surface/SubsurfaceSite Specific: The Work of WEISS/MANFREDI Architects, and Public Natures: Evolutionary Infrastructures. A new book, Drifting Symmetries will be published in early 2024.

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