5.13.09 | Boston, MA | David Manfredi, founding principal of the Boston-based architecture and planning firm Elkus Manfredi Architects, was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects at their annual meeting in San Francisco on May 1, 2009.

Mr. Manfredi was honored for his design leadership in creating a new generation of thriving neighborhoods, vibrant academic campuses, and lively mixed use "people places" that respect their heritage and the environment while embracing the best of 21st century design.

He has built a major national practice around his commitment to placemaking and community-building that has earned consistent support from leading institutions, corporate entities, and the development community. Prior to co-founding Elkus Manfredi in 1988 with Howard Elkus FAIA, Mr. Manfredi was a vice president at The Architects Collaborative in Cambridge.

While ranging widely in project type, all of David Manfredi's work shares a deeply-held commitment to designing for human connection. From the macro level of reviving a bleak downtown in the heart of a city, to the micro level of creating a collaborative research lab where spontaneous encounters spark profound scientific discovery, Mr. Manfredi is devoted to making dynamic, human-scale places that encourage natural interaction.

His specialties include the adaptive reuse of urban areas and commercial environments that are experiencing their second or third generation of land use, reconnecting them to the patterns of the surrounding city and giving them new life as useful and meaningful public places. Local projects of this type include Trilogy in Boston's Fenway District, Station Landing in Medford, Westwood Station, and transformation of the old Haviland candy factory in Cambridge into 200 condominiums at One First Street. In Boston, projects underway include redevelopment of Daniel Burnham's Filene's Department Store as an integral part of a vertical mixed-use environment of retail, hotel, office, and residential components that will reinvent the shopping district of Downtown Crossing; and South Boston's Fan Pier, which will be transformed into a lively mixed-use mecca for Boston's newest neighborhood.

Nationally, Mr. Manfredi remade the Lazarus Department Store, the historic anchor of the commercial district in Columbus, Ohio, into an award-winning, sustainable, mixed-use office and retail anchor. He gave new life to a defunct mall with the planning and design of Belmar, a new mixed-use downtown in Lakewood, Colorado, and he led the design for the enormously successful The Americana at Brand in Glendale, California and The Grove in Los Angeles.

As a leader in the emergence of university-sponsored commercial districts, Mr. Manfredi has worked with major academic institutions to design mixed-use and residential environments that have transformed their campus edges from barriers into interactive common ground between the academic community and surrounding neighborhoods. At Harvard University, The Ohio State University, Franklin & Marshall College, and the University of Pennsylvania, these multiple-building projects have repaired urban fabric, invigorated the student experience and the economy of surrounding neighborhoods, and enlivened distinctive new public realms.

Mr. Manfredi is also a pioneer in developing the prototype urban research laboratory. He has been responsible for the strategic planning and design of numerous high-rise lab buildings that support the collaborative imperatives of today's science while recognizing important urban planning obligations and opportunities. For those reasons, Millennium Pharmaceuticals at University Park at MIT and The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard were both recognized by R &D magazine with 'Lab of the Year" awards.

Mr. Manfredi is a sought-after and compelling speaker at both architectural and development forums, educating clients and communities about the value that thoughtful, sophisticated planning and design can bring to everyday life. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame with Bachelor degrees in both English and Architecture, and also the University of Chicago, where he received a Master of Arts degree.