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Patricia Seitz, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP, is an Architect, Professor and Chair of Architecture at Massachusetts College of Art and Design

Patti’s career influences developed as an undergraduate obtaining a degree in architecture while studying Chinese and Japanese language, literature and history. That combination became an essential environmental lens honoring the natural world, and its implications within culture, art, language formation, and religious traditions as complementary to design thinking. After working in the private sector at several firms it became clear that supporting the environment meant working with those people who could most benefit from the work. This linkage of environment and the spirit of place within landscapes, cities, cultures and people in need, underlies her basic perspective and led her to focus on marginalized social spaces largely left out of conventional project work.

EDUCATION

In her role within the Department as a Professor of Architecture, she teaches in the graduate and undergraduate program design studios and independent thesis projects. She is an active practitioner with a human-centered focus, developing projects and curriculum across the program that support our communities and our students in design through community-based engagement. These have involved students applying design across user groups often in marginalized urban communities, and as designers and makers working with practitioners – architects, fabricators, and non-profit organizations. Learning through leading design projects is also important to the development of socially responsive citizen-architects, where architectural design is envisioned as place-making with a goal of substantially improving cities through support of diversity and equity.

At Washington University Patti received a B.A. in Architecture Magna Cum Laude, and an AIA award. She also received an M.A. in Asian Studies. She graduated with a Master of Architecture from MIT with an AIA Chandler Prize. She has also taught printmaking for architects while a student.

PRACTICE

Seitz Architects focuses on energy efficient designs for community-based non-profits including schools, daycares and family environments for elders, children and families. With the intention to build healthy, sustainable communities with a respect for the land and materials; her work enhances the dignity of the people and families who inhabit the designs. She is a former Boston Society for Architecture (BSA) Board Member and currently a Council Member and consultant for Native Plant Trust.

RESEARCH

As Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the Global Design Initiative for Refugee Children (GDIRC), she manages projects and mentors student and early architecture and landscape architecture practitioners to collaboratively design and build community play and gathering spaces to support social cohesion and healing for displaced communities globally and immigrant and migrant populations locally. These include urban environments centered around child play, and temporal play structures in encampments globally that are scalable, replicable and deployable anywhere. Current initiatives include Portable Play for homeless, displaced and refugee children. The group recently received a development and prototyping grant for this work. www.GDIRC.org

Industry Experience

Grants

Seitz has also received a number of grants that have supported the development of humanitarian initiatives outside of the college, and supporting work at MassArt within the M. Arch and BFA programs. These include sustainability initiatives in design, lighting design, the solar decathlon design and construction, and expansion of the curriculum as envisioned by the faculty collectively.  

These include:

Community Preservation Act (Boston) Seitz authored a grant for the design and construction of a social space for Lena Park Community Development Corporation (CDC) in the Boston community of Dorchester based on community work with them. This collaborative team with the award-winning AIA committee Global Design Initiative for Refugee Children, created initial designs through design charrettes with GDIRC Team, the Lena Park Executive Director, Katherine Martinez, and the Lena Park Youth Council. Teens from Lena Park CDC, which supports diasporic families from Haiti and beyond, were the client participants.  The Landscape Architects selected for the project, G2 Collaborative Landscape Architects also won a BSLA project award for the final design and its implementation.  

Nuckolls Fund Lesley Wheel Introductory Lighting Program to support lighting courses within the Department of Architecture and in association with the Studio for Interrelated Media Department faculty member Elaine Buckholtz

Two Green Roof Grants provided by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs to lead a student group at MassArt to design and construct a pilot green roof using only native plant materials.

Massachusetts Cultural Council Cultural Economic Development Program, and the National Parks Service River and Trails Program, Patricia Johanson a well- known environmental artist, partnered with Seitz to develop public space and building designs using Rocky Marciano’s training trail to bring community places to the city of Brockton, MA. The project was designed and developed within the Senior Architecture Degree Project design studio. The work followed Johanson’s “An Artist’s View of a Strategic Plan” for the City of Brockton, MA

New England Foundation for the Arts planning grant, with Artist Thomas Whittlesey and the Sustainable Architecture course

Solar Decathlon Grant and Fundraising initiated in Seitz’ Sustainable Architecture course as a project for the campus, the two-year initiative was ultimately carried out by the entire department with a strong student-led team which developed from that course.

MassArt Faculty Design and Research Grant for Travel to Lebanon The pilot project with the Global Design Initiative for Refugee Children was constructed at a Syrian refugee camp in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon run by SAWA for Development and Aid (SDA). This playground provided a model for working with local designers and the camp residents. It also included the development of social space for adults and as well as children, and created an opportunity for the committee to play an active role in managing the project team. The Bekaa Valley has received the highest number of Syrian refugees, with more than 40% living in informal tented settlements. In the summer of 2017, Seitz travelled to Lebanon to meet with a local partner NGO there, SDA, and interviewed a number of Syrian refugees living in these camps. Many had been there for 4-5 years, and some had moved more than once as 1-year leases on farm lands were not extended. Building upon the work of humanitarians and peacebuilders who provide food, water, shelter, healthcare, and educational support, the GDIRC committee introduced child-focused public spaces to support positive interactions, social cohesion and healing supporting at-risk youths and their families through play through partnering with a local designer.

Awards

2020 AIA HONOR AWARD

Collaborative Achievement Award: Global Design Initiative for Refugee Children

https://www.architectmagazine.com/awards/aia-awards/2020-collaborative-achievement-award-global-design-initiative-for-refugee-children_o

 

 

Professional Affiliations

Co-Chair www.gdirc.org Global Design Initiative for Refugee Children Co-Chair www.gdirc.org

Knowledge Community Co-Chair, GDIRC Boston Society for Architecture and Boston Society of Landscape Architects,

Council Member, Native Plant Trust – As the U.S.’ first plant conservation organization, they conserve and promote New England’s native plants to ensure healthy biologically diverse landscapes.