Architects Receive Regional, National, International Recognition

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Edward Steinfeld, Kenneth MacKay, Lynda Schneekloth and Robert Shibley, all faculty members in the Department of Architecture in the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning, have been recognized for the quality of their work.

Pioneering architect and universal-design specialist Edward Steinfeld, Ph.D., professor of architecture, received the Ron Mace Designing Award for the 21st Century Award at the Designing for the 21st Century III Conference in Rio de Janeiro. The UB Center for Inclusive Design, headed by Steinfeld, received the institutional version of the award. The awards and the conference are sponsored annually by Adaptive Environments of Boston.

MacKay, assistant professor of architecture, has received the First Award for New Construction from the Buffalo/Western New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

He received the award for his $9.5 million "Total Aging in Place Project," recently constructed on the 70-acre Harry and Jeannette Weinberg Campus, a senior housing and day-care facility in Getzville that provides a wide range of residential and health services to adults in a non-institutional setting.

MacKay, the founder and owner of Kenneth MacKay Architecture, designed a 120-unit senior housing and day-care facility for adults with Alzheimer's disease for the fast-growing, multi-level facility.

His design is distinguished by interior soothing and convenient to both staff and program participants, and by natural and interior lighting designs that take advantage of changing light schemes evoked by the earth's rotation and revolution around the sun.

The innovative floor plan makes it possible to integrate a wide range of activities and integrate staff into the lives of residents and day-care participants conveniently and in a manner that provokes the least amount of disorientation.

It accommodates such activities as physical, speech and recreation therapies, congregate meals, nursing care, nursing home care, optometry, audiology, dentistry, podiatry, prosthetic and orthotic fitting and use, pharmaceutical service, home meal delivery and a personal emergency response system.

His award-winning built work includes the Moog Federal Credit Union, the Fountain Plaza Service Building and Beechwood Nursing Home, which was included in a Progressive Architecture special issue. He is past president of the Buffalo/Western New York chapter of the AIA and a past board member of AIA New York State.

"Architecture and Landscape: Making and Unmaking the World," an essay by Lynda Schneekloth of Buffalo, associate professor of architecture, was published in the September edition of 306090, a highly respected publication that critics say proves a new journal "can succeed, given enough energy and the right mission: to reinvigorate the architectural world."

Her ongoing work with Robert Shibley, professor of architecture, and director of the Urban Design Project in the UB School of Architecture and Planning, with respect to Buffalo's historic grain elevators, was featured in the November edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education in an article titled "History on a Towering Scale." The piece speaks to efforts by the Urban Design Project to preserve these historic structures -- an effort supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts. 

Shibley's essay, "Housing" was published in Stanley Collyer's highly rated new book, "Competing Globally in Architecture Competitions: Meeting New Design Challenges in the Information Age." Collyer is editor of Competitions magazine and a founding member of The Competitions Projects, Inc., a non-profit organization that functions as a clearing house from information on design competitions in the U.S. and abroad.