Architects Marion Weiss, the Graham Professor of Practice in Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design, and Michael Manfredi, co-founders of a New York-based architectural design firm named one of North America’s “Emerging Voices” by the Architectural League of New York, are the 2020 recipients of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture.

Their multidisciplinary practice, WEISS/MANFREDI Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism, is at the forefront of redefining the relationships between landscape, architecture, infrastructure and art. Their award-winning projects include the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle. Integrating art, architecture and ecology, the park has won numerous other honors and was the first project in North America to win Harvard University’s Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design.

Most recently, WEISS/MANFREDI was selected through an international competition to re-imagine the world-renowned La Brea Tar Pits Park and Museum in Los Angeles.
The medals, typically presented in person at Monticello, will be given in absentia this year due to coronavirus-related limitations on events and travel.

WEISS/MANFREDI is known for placing environmental stewardship and sustainability at the core of their work, and for their design projects that require progressive ecological and infrastructural frameworks. The Krishna P. Singh Center for Nanotechnology, a state-of-the-art lab facility at the University of Pennsylvania, earned the firm an AIA Institute Honor Award.