Marywood’s Maria MacDonald to Present Keynote at Greater Erie Awards Maria MacDonald, a practicing interior architect and Program Director of Interior Architecture at Marywood University, will give a keynote presentation at this year’s Greater Erie Awards, sponsored by Preservation Erie, on October 10. In addition to her role at Marywood, Ms. MacDonald also serves as the Executive Director of the Center for the Living City, the only urbanist organization founded by Jane Jacobs. Ms. MacDonald specializes in adaptive reuse, preservation, and restoration projects, as well as creative civic engagement. With over 25 years of experience, she partners her professional practice with her teaching. Ms. MacDonald has been a team leader for many significant community projects throughout her career. As an educator, her intense focus is on service and community outreach, providing community-based, experiential learning opportunities for her students and the people in the communities where they work. Ms MacDonald holds degrees in both Architecture and Interior Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design, where she received the Excellence in Design award for her work on the “Reclamation of Forgotten Spaces.” She is a founding faculty member of Marywood University’s School of Architecture and has served as the Interior Architecture Program Director for the past 15 years. She has successfully guided the program through two full NASAD accreditations. With her integrative, holistic design approach, Ms. MacDonald works to strengthen the relationships between the allied design disciplines and the people and environments where we live, work, play, and, ideally, thrive. Preservation Erie’s annual Greater Erie Awards acknowledge individuals, businesses, and organizations that are exceptional stewards of the physical and cultural landscape that is Greater Erie and includes a keynote by a distinguished urban planner, historic preservationist, or a similar professional. There are eight recipients of this year’s Greater Erie Awards. The event will be held October 10 at 6 p.m. at the Erie Center for Arts & Technology.
U.K. Architect Addresses Tangible Spirituality/Sustainable Architecture at Marywood Dr. Iliona Outram Khalili, a U.K licensed architect, spoke on “Tangible Spirituality: The Mason’s Methods, Analogy, and Sustainable Architecture” on Tuesday, September 10, at 7 p.m., in the Center for Architectural Studies at Marywood University. The event, which was an interdisciplinary collaboration between the Center for the Living City and Marywood University’s School of Architecture, School of Humanities, and Centers of Excellence (Center for Urban Studies, Mother Theresa Maxis IHM Center for Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation, and Center for Law, Justice, and Policy), was free and open to the public. In her presentation, Dr. Khalili proposes a sustainable 21st century architecture that inherits methods and figures developed by masons thousands of years ago. Using these ancient practical analogies, a theological meditation emerges that is not limited by cultural or religious symbolism, but brings perennial archetypes together in conscious combinations during design and construction. Dr. Iliona Outram Khalili is a U.K licensed architect and graduate of the Architectural Association School in London. She has been a recent lecturer and course lead at Manchester Metropolitan University and currently teaches “Advanced Earth Architecture Design” with New Earth UK. Her childhood was filled with the architecture of her renowned father, John Outram, and with the diaspora Greek culture of her mother Rima’s family. Later, she learned “earth and ceramic architecture” from humanitarian architect Nader Khalili, who designated her a “Master Builder in Earth Architecture.” She trained by designing and building hands-on to develop Khalili’s innovations on traditional earth architecture, which were inspired by the Sufi mystical poetry of Rumi in his native Persian language. As a widow, she continued her spiritual education with Sufi healers Murshid Shaykh Taner Ansari and Shaykha Muzeyyen Ansari, designing and building for their sustainable living project in New York State, and, most recently, the memorial vault of Shaykh Taner.For details on Marywood’s School of Architecture, visit: marywood.edu/architecture. To learn more about Marywood University’s School of Humanities, go to: marywood.edu/humanities. For information about the Center for the Living City, visit: centerforthelivingcity.org
