Join us Wednesday, April 29 for the 2026 Michael I. and Patricia M. Sovern Lecture on Design, as Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi present "Drifting Symmetries: Projects and Provocations." 

Weiss and Manfredi's award-winning firm WEISS/MANFREDI Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism, is a New York City–based multidisciplinary practice. Notable projects include the Olympic Sculpture Park at the Seattle Art Museum, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitor Center, and Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park. 

In an era when the dual challenges of climate change and social isolation loom large, the lecture explores architecture's role in shaping a sustainable and connected future. The lecture introduces their new book, Drifting Symmetries, and will include WEISS/MANFREDI’s recent work which blurs the boundaries between architecture, landscape, infrastructure in response to environmental and social challenges. 

WEISS/MANFREDI Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism is a multidisciplinary design practice based in New York City. Founded by Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi, the firm is known for the dynamic integration of architecture, art, infrastructure, and landscape design. The firm has been recognized for the Seattle Art Museum’s celebrated Olympic Sculpture Park, the Women’s Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitor Center and Overlook, and Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park. Current projects include the United States Embassy in New Delhi, India, the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum in Los Angeles, the Tampa Museum of Art expansion, and Lincoln Center’s new outdoor theater in New York City. Most recently, the firm won the international competition for the addition and renovation to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, which attracted submissions from over 180 firms from thirty countries on six continents. 

 
Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi are recipients of the 2024 Louis I. Kahn Award in Architecture, the 2020 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture, the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Architecture, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Architecture, and the Architectural League of New York’s Emerging Voices Award. The firm has also been honored with the New York AIA Gold Medal and the Tau Sigma Delta Gold Medal, awarded to one individual or firm in the world each year. The firm's projects have been featured in exhibitions at the Venice Architectural Biennale, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the São Paulo Biennale of International Architecture and Design, the Shanghai Biennale, the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, the National Building Museum, Harvard University, the Landscape Architecture Biennale in Barcelona, the Design Centre in Essen, Germany, and the Guggenheim Museum. Weiss and Manfredi’s work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, the Seattle Art Museum, the Library of Congress, and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Five monographs on the firm’s work have been released; the most recent, Drifting Symmetries: Projects, Provocations, and Other Enduring Models, was published by Park Books in Winter 2025.