The School of Architecture that Mississippi State built

Twenty-one years after first opening its doors, Mississippi's only School of Architecture is quickly establishing a national reputation for excellence, with alumni, students, and faculty accumulating honors for creativity in design and in educational innovation.

by
Joe R. Farris

Alumni or faculty of the school have served as president of the state's chapter of the American Institute of Architects for the past five years in a row. Associate dean Rodner Wright recently completed his term as head of the professional organization. He became the first African-American to fill that position.

Others among the 500 or so graduates to date are scattered across the country, primarily in the Southeast, but with notable clusters in New York and California. Graduates -- and their work -- are becoming increasingly prominent.

T. Steven Davis, '80, was project architect for the new 1,100-car North Parking Facility for St. Dominic in Jackson, winner of the 1994 Design Award of the Mississippi AIA chapter. One competition juror wrote: "We have designed and built many parking garages and this has got to be the best we have ever seen."

"I think that in 10 or 15 years, architects in Mississippi will be almost synonymous with Mississippi State architecture graduates," says Steve Davis, '80, an architect with Canizara Trigiani Architects in Jackson.

Davis was project architect for a new parking facility at St. Dominic Medical Center in Jackson that won the 1994 Design Award of the Mississippi Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

Ann Balch Miano, '89, had already earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Vanderbilt University and worked for two years in customer relations before her interests turned to architecture. Then, she chose the relatively young Mississippi State program over those at other schools she visited, such as Texas and Auburn. "The minute I walked into the School of Architecture at Mississippi State, I felt a sense of camaraderie, an atmosphere," Miano said. "It really is like a big family."

As an architect for the Mississippi firm of Foil Wyatt, Miano spent much of the past three years working on additions to the Mississippi State campus. She served as job captain for the addition to the library now under construction,

then moved on to work with engineers on the structure and design of the Bryan Athletic Administration Building. Construction on that building, with its "unusual aesthetics," began this summer. Miano also helped out on the Comprehensive Assistive Technologies Center building that will be constructed adjacent to the Student Health Center starting this fall. She was working on plans for a new library at Jackson State University when she took a new job in August in her hometown of Birmingham.

"It was rigorous -- not only physically and mentally, but emotionally, also," Miano said of the School of Architecture curriculum. "I have a great deal of respect for those people who go in at 19 years old and do it in five years."

Architect Belinda Stewart, '85, of Eupora watches as workmen complete repairs to the storm-damaged 1920 Old Maid's Gate at Mississippi University for Women. Stewart's firm handled much of the storm damage repair on the MUW campus after a 1992 tornado.

Belinda Stewart, '85, who operates her own thriving practice in the small town of Eupora, received an award last spring from the Mississippi Historical Society and Mississippi Heritage Trust for a new building in the National Historic Register district of Port Gibson. The award was for Stewart's work in fitting the new Matt Ross Administrative Building into the historical setting.

She also was the organizer last year of the Natchez meeting of the national board of directors of the Vernacular Architecture Forum. "We had 250 people from around the world looking at everyday structures -- barns, outbuildings -- as well as the famous mansions."

Stewart's specialization in historic preservation and historic district buildings stems from her experience at Mississippi State, where she completed a senior thesis on historic rural architecture. "I got interested in the field when I was assigned to do a research paper for historical architecture class. I decided to work on my hometown, Eupora. In Webster County, I found more than 30 Civil War era log homes that no one had known about."

Belinda Stewart Architects in Eupora is now a firm of seven.

One recent project was handling storm damage repairs to nine buildings on the campus of Mississippi University for Women necessitated by an October 1992 tornado. One aspect of that work was the reassembly of the school's "Old Maid's Gate," a stone archway that was shattered into 20 or so pieces by a falling tree. "We had to put it back together like a jigsaw puzzle, and it wasn't easy," Stewart recalls.

Yet another university-based project carried out by a Mississippi State architecture graduate won a Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts in 1993. The Design of Public Space Award went to Thomas Howorth, '83, for renovation of the Barnard Observatory built in 1859 at the University of Mississippi.

Howorth, of Howorth & Associates in Jackson, also was among the four initial winners last year of the national AIA's Young Architects Citations, honoring leadership in the profession by architects licensed for 10 years or less.

Two graduates -- Janet Marie Smith, '81, and Whitney Powers, '85 -- were among 35 young architects from around the world selected for inclusion in a special edition of Progressive Architecture.

Powers and her partner in Studio A, a Charleston, S.C., firm, began specializing in the reconstruction of destroyed or damaged buildings after Hurricane Hugo swept the Carolina coast a few years ago. Powers also teaches at Clemson University's College of Architecture.

Janet Marie Smith recently left her position as vice president for stadium planning and development with the Baltimore Orioles to assume an array of new responsibilities in Atlanta: as director of planning and development for the city's Olympic Stadium, in preparation for the 1996 summer games; to work on a spring training facility for the Atlanta Braves and a future home for the Atlanta Hawks; and as vice president for sports at Turner Broadcasting System Properties. She served as design manager for the Oriole Park at Camden Yards, which opened in downtown Baltimore last year to national acclaim.

She directed the design of scoreboards, advertising graphics, ushers' uniforms, and souvenir tickets, for example, and assisted in development of spring training facilities and the planning of minor league parks.

Smith is the 1994 Alumna of the Year for the School of Architecture. Before joining the Orioles in 1989, she was responsible for management and development of downtown Los Angeles' oldest city park, Pershing Square.

Farrol "Bud" Hollomon Jr., '84, of McComb, is the architect for the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame planned for the Lakeland Drive area of Jackson, adjacent to Smith-Wills Stadium and scheduled to open in 1995. He also was the co-winner -- along with School of Architecture classmate Mark Vaughn, '84 -- of the design competition for the Mississippi Vietnam Veterans Memorial planned for Point Cadet in Biloxi. Vaughn also is an adjunct faculty member for the school's fifth-year program in Jackson.

Mississippi State architecture graduates have made their mark early on in the profession, and odds are, the best is yet to come. "Architects typically do their best work in their 50's or later, and tend to work well into their later years," says School of Architecture Dean John McRae. "Usually people don't reach full satisfaction with the level of work they're doing for decades, so it's particularly satisfying to see the successes of young graduates."

New graduates consistently have done well on the professional licensing examinations. Last year's results released by the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards showed Mississippi State graduates' passing rates to be 14 to 45 points higher than the national average in all nine parts of the test for professional registration.

So far, most graduates have entered traditional practice, but "We want to encourage students to look at alternative careers related to architecture, as well as private practice," McRae said.

Some have done so already. Irene Tyson, '88, is executive director of the American Institute of Architecture Students in Washington, D.C. Earlier, she helped develop the American Institute of Architects' Careers in Architecture Program, which provides career services for 55,000 members. She was the 1993 Alumni Fellow for the School of Architecture.