Machado and Silvetti Associates

Profile of Machado and Silvetti Associates

Business Name

Machado and Silvetti Associates

Location

United States

Services

Architecture, Urban Design

Website

http://www.machado-silvetti.com

Machado and Silvetti Associates is an architecture and urban design firm known for distinctive spaces and unique works of architecture in the United States and abroad. Their designs are the result of careful integration of the client's aspirations, the project's programmatic requirements, and the nature and character of the place for which a proposal is designed. The work does not espouse any signature style, but strives to find that which is unique and important within a given project, and to express that urbanistically and architecturally. The projects are distinctive for their conceptual clarity and visual intensity.

Machado and Silvetti Associates became incorporated in 1985, although principals Rodolfo Machado and Jorge Silvetti have been in association since 1974. The firm's projects have been of diverse size and nature, and include urban design and planning for Berlin, Beirut, Buenos Aires, Sicily, Frankfurt, San Juan, Seoul, Singapore, Venice, Vienna, and in the United States for Boston, Dallas, Houston, New York, Portland, and San Francisco.

In 1991, the firm was given the first ever Award in Architecture by the American Academy of Arts and Letters for twenty years of "boldly conceived and brilliantly executed urban projects" and the designs were commended for being "uncompromisingly dedicated to envisioning a meaningful architecture of the public realm." Since that time, the office has received three National Honor Awards from the American Institute of Architects as well as the AIA Brick in Architecture Award, ten Progressive Architecture awards and citations, nine design awards from the New England AIA chapter, thirteen Boston Society of Architects awards, including the 2003 Harleston Parker Medal, and the prestigious International Award for Architecture in Stone.

The firm's designs have been published in all major international professional magazines and displayed in numerous exhibitions in the United States, Europe, and Latin America, most notably at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, at the Biennale di Venezia, at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C., the 1984 I.B.A. Exhibition in Berlin, and at the XVII Triennale di Milano. Three monographs have been produced on the office, Rodolfo Machado and Jorge Silvetti: Buildings for Cities (1990), Casas 40: Rodolfo Machado & Jorge Silvetti (1995), and Unprecedented Realism: The Architecture of Machado and Silvetti (1995).

In addition to their architectural practice, principals Rodolfo Machado and Jorge Silvetti both teach at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, where Mr. Silvetti chaired the Department of Architecture from 1995 to 2002 and Mr. Machado currently chairs the department of Urban Planning and Design. Additionally, Mr. Silvetti served as a juror for the Pritzker Prize from 1997 to 2004.

Completed projects include - graduate student housing for Harvard University - a comprehensive master plan, a dormitory, and a parking structure for Princeton University - a museum for the University of Utah - a landmark tower for the University of Cincinnati - the Wiess College dormitory and dining halls for Rice University - the South Boston Waterfront Park for the Massachusetts Port Authority in Boston - a mixed-use building at the Boston Center for the Arts - campus master plans for the University of California San Francisco, the American University of Beirut and the St. Albans School in Washington, DC - a branch of the Boston Public Library - Robert F. Wagner, Jr. Park in Battery Park City, New York - an addition to the Provincetown Art Association and Museum in Provincetown, Massachusetts - the adaptive reuse of the Rockefeller Stone Barns - the expansion and renovation of the Getty Villa in Malibu, transforming it into a center for the study of classical antiquities, archeology, and comparative ancient cultures - as well as museum planning for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Snite Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame, and the Addison Gallery at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.