Michael Dennis

Professor Emeritus Michael Dennis has been in private practice in Boston since 1981 and prior to that in Ithaca, New York from 1970. His experience extends over 30 years and includes projects of various types and scales. The firm’s work has been exhibited and published nationally and internationally. Much of the firm’s recent work is institutional, beginning with the Art Museum for the University of California at Santa Barbara, which received First Prize in a national design competition in 1983. Recently completed are the Science/Technology Building at Syracuse University and the first buildings in the extensive plan for Carnegie Mellon University. The Carnegie Mellon Campus Design won first prize in a major design competition and received a 1988 Progressive Architecture Urban Design Citation as well as a 1990 AIA award. The firm’s Precinct Plan for the University of Southern California in Los Angeles won a 1993 Progressive Architecture Urban Design Citation. Dennis has also lectured widely and is the author of Court and Garden: From the French Hotel to the City of Modern Architecture, 1986. Dennis has also been actively involved in research concerning campus design and planning. He has used the design studio to explore such issues as the possibility of buildings having their own independent identity, but also relating to the continuity of the place and being a part of the campus fabric. Over the last few years, work at Arizona State University, Syracuse, University of Virginia, the University of Southern California, and Carnegie Mellon University has provided the opportunity for such exploration.