L.C. Dillenback Lecture
Rodolfo Machado, principal of Machado and Silvetti Associates (Boston), was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina where he received his Diploma in Architecture from the Universidad de Buenos Aires. He studied urban design at the Centre de Recherche d’Urbanisme, in Paris, France and continued studies at the University of California, Berkeley, receiving his Master of Architecture degree and pursuing postgraduate work in the area of architectural theory and criticism. Mr. Machado’s architectural practice with Jorge Silvetti began in 1974. Their firm, Machado and Silvetti Associates, was incorporated in 1985. An architecture and urban design firm known for distinctive spaces and unique works of architecture in the United States and abroad, Machado and Silvetti Associates has completed projects of diverse size and scope.
Notable office projects in which Mr. Machado served as design principal include, among others: graduate student housing for Harvard University; a residential college for Rice University; a parking structure and dormitory for Princeton University; Atelier 505, a luxury mixed-use building in Boston’s South End; the Hassayampa Academic Village, a living and learning facility for 2,000 students at Arizona State University in Tempe; the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, an expansion to the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and the Robert F. Wagner, Jr. Park in Battery Park City. Mr. Machado has designed master plans for Princeton University, the American University of Beirut, Dewey Square in Boston and the St. Alban’s School for Boys in the District of Columbia. Ongoing projects include: the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art and a new Theatre and Studio Arts building for Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, among others.
Machado and Silvetti Associates has received three National Honor Awards from the American Institute of Architects: a 1993 award in architecture for the Princeton University Parking Structure, a 1998 urban design award for Robert F. Wagner, Jr. Park, and a 2003 award in architecture for the Honan-Allston Branch of the Boston Public Library. The firm has also received ten Progressive Architecture awards, seventeen Boston Society of Architects Awards, including the 2003 Harleston Parker Medal, thirteen awards from the New England chapter of the American Institute of Architects, and the First Award in Architecture given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Three monographs have been produced on the office, Rodolfo Machado and Jorge Silvetti: Buildings for Cities (1989), Casas 40: Rodolfo Machado & Jorge Silvetti (1995), and Unprecedented Realism: The Architecture of Machado and Silvetti (1995).
A member of the Harvard University faculty since 1986, Mr. Machado was Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design at the Graduate School of Design from 1986 to 2010, chaired the Department of Urban Planning and Design from 2004 to 2009 and is currently Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design, Emeritus. He has taught at Carnegie-Mellon University and at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he chaired the Department of Architecture from 1978 until 1986. Mr. Machado has conducted seminars, lectured, and has been a visiting critic at many schools of architecture in this country and abroad. Most notably he has been Jean Labatut Professor of Urbanism at Princeton University, Thomas Jefferson Professor in Architecture at the University of Virginia, Bishop Professor of Architecture at Yale University, and Smith Professor of Architecture at Rice University.
Mr. Machado has served as a juror for a number of national and international competitions and prizes. In 1995, he curated an exhibition entitled “Monolithic Architecture” at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. His drawings and projects have been extensively published and exhibited in museums and galleries around the world.
