Mickey Ackerman
An internationally recognized design leader, Mickey Ackerman has spent decades teaching designers how to define problems clearly, then solve those problems through multidisciplinary teamwork. For 15 years as the head of the Industrial Design department at the Rhode Island School of Design, Mickey established a portfolio of sponsored studios and created real-world design solutions for industry leaders such as Intel, Rubbermaid, Frigidaire, and General Mills. He has established strategic partnerships with the Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan School of Management, Brown University Engineering Department, NASA, and Boston’s Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology, among many others.
Mickey has a lifelong interest and fascination with materials; he received a Masters in Industrial Design at RISD, he holds multiple patents, and his designs have won international awards. An educator at heart, Mickey is passionate about student-centered learning and has served on the Board of Directors for the Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Vermont and the Green School in Bali, Indonesia.
He is currently an advisory board member for Earth DNA, a platform for climate advocacy and action, and Global Fellows in Courage, a Providence-based fellowship that connects international entrepreneurs with the rich design industry in Rhode Island.
Chris Bardt
Chris has practiced and taught and researched architecture for over 28 years, after earning a Bachelor of Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1983 and a Masters of Architecture II from Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 1988. His professional practice, 3six0 Architecture co-founded in 1995 has been recognized for outstanding design achievements with numerous awards, publications, and worldwide press. Chris has been a member of the architecture faculty at the Rhode Island School of Design since 1998 and has served in a professional capacity on several boards including the Capital Center Design Review Committee (current) and the Quonset Development Corporation Design Review Committee.
Over his career, Chris’ research has influenced exploration in his field of design. He has extensively investigated the geometry of sunlight and developed an internationally recognized large scale public installation translating the sun’s movement into architectonic construction. Chris co-authored research on computer modelling of structural ribbed surfaces, the work being featured at the international Design Modeling Symposium Berlin. In 2007, his research on the design of masonry units was published and presented at the National Concrete Masonry Association conference. Over the past two decades Chris has researched the impact materials have on culture and the imagination; his forthcoming book “Material and Mind” examines how physical material influences design and thought.
Chris’s work has been exhibited at the Cranbrook Academy, the ETH Swiss Technical University, The Architectural Association in London, The Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco, and the RISD Museum. Publications featuring Chris’s research include, AA Files, ViA arquitectura, Installations by Architects and Expanded Fields.
A dedicated pedagogue, Chris has influenced generations of students, developing and leading core and upper level studio curricula and most recently designing a new drawing curriculum bringing digital tools into a meaningful relationship with manual and empirical processes of drawing. Chris has lectured widely on the education of designers including Chinese University, Hong Kong, Washington University, St. Louis, the Swiss Technical University, Chur, Switzerland and the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, China.
John Everett Benson
John Everett Benson is a calligrapher, stone carver, sculptor and typeface designer. He is the second of three generations of Bensons to run The John Stevens Shop, a 314 year-old stone carving and lettering business in Newport, Rhode Island. After a summer of study with his father, Benson enrolled in the sculpture program at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he graduated in 1961. Soon after, Benson joined the staff at The John Stevens Shop, eventually serving as Director from 1965-1993.
Benson’s career is marked with innovating typography, inscribing national monuments, and designing graceful and glorious headstones and memorial tables. Under Benson’s leadership, the John Stevens Shop fulfilled major commissions to design and carve the inscriptions on the John F. Kennedy Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC, the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama and the Franklin D Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, DC. Benson’s inscriptions also grace the walls of major American museums, universities and government buildings throughout the United States, including Brown, Yale, and Harvard Universities, The National Gallery of Art, and the Georgia O’Keefe Museum. He has also made headstones and memorial tables for a wide array of notable public and private figures in America, including Tennessee Williams, Lillian Hellman and George Balanchine.
Additionally, and of particular note, Benson designed fonts and lettering that are still available on the Adobe Systems, including Alexa, Balzano and Caliban. Another was designed specifically for a project at the Roger Williams Zoo, Aardvark.
Since his retirement, Benson has worked as a figurative and portrait sculptor in clay and bronze.
Laura Briggs
Laura Briggs, MA, is a Senior Critic at the Rhode Island School of Design and the co-founder of BriggsKnowles A+D, a Providence-based architectural and design practice recognized for its use of light, color and the integration of energy efficient and renewable energy technology. Laura’s approach to architecture combines a scientific method with design practice. Her work on super efficient buildings, adaptable photovoltaic systems and concentrating solar has been supported by the US Department of Energy, Arnold W. Brunner Foundation, Deborah J. Norden Fund and through a fellowship from the MacDowell Colony.
Laura is an active contributor to the Green Studio Handbook. BriggsKnowles A+D work has been published in several venues including AD, Dwell, Domus, the Home Living Channel, the New York Times and Metropolis Magazine.
As a professor, Laura has led community based projects with her students that impact both Rhode Island and global communities. Of note, she worked on the Bami Farms Greenhouses for the African Alliance of Rhode Island, Southlight Performance Space and garden for the Southside Cultural Center, the Southside Community Land Trust (SCLT) bioswale and planters, and a net-zero design for the new Tomaquag Museum campus.
Stephen Durkee
Stephen Durkee founded Durkee Brown Architects in 1994, and by the time he left in 2010, Durkee, Brown, Viveiros, and Werenfels was one of the largest firms in the state and most impactful for the revitalization of Providence. Steve directed the adaptive reuse of 15 historic buildings within the Downtown Providence National Register Historic District. In addition to his architectural legacy, Steve has been committed to mentoring the next generation of architectural designers; no fewer than six architectural firms in Rhode Island were founded by his former employees and mentees. He also boasts a tremendous record of public service and civic engagement: 11-years as Chair of the Providence City Plan Commission, 18 years on the board of the Providence Revolving Fund, past president of AS220, member of the Capital Center Commission, and board member for Grow Smart RI and RIPTA. Steve was one of the principal drafters of the Rhode Island Building Standards Commission’s Rehabilitation Code, which changed the way historic buildings were assessed under building/fire codes. “Steve is a civic tour de force. He greatly influenced the flavor of design in Providence,” noted the selection committee, adding, “A lot of the best parts of Providence are because of Steve.”
James Estes
James (Jim) Estes graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 1971 with a degree in Architecture and since, has become known for his iconic place-based designs. His style of quiet modernism is reflective in his professional and personal work, designing his own house and others by drawing inspiration from the landscape and history of New England.
Since 1994 his firm, Estes & Company Architects, which was later rebranded in 2000 to Estes/Twombly Architects, has been responsible for some of the most impressive houses in the Northeast. The company and associates affiliated with Estes/Twombly have won over 150 awards and honorable mentions.
The simplicity of Jim’s work is rooted in his goals to make houses, “…that respond to place,”. His pursuit of this goal has led to the firm’s success, the building of several beautiful properties, and a published book of his work.
With numerous awards, a book about his works, features in over thirty books on architecture, and over a hundred articles and profiles, Estes’ accomplishments certainly speak for themselves. More importantly, his commitment to sustainable, simple, place-inspired architecture has inspired designers, given people’s homes, and helped nurture a growing tradition of environmentally sustainable homes with roots in history and culture.
Malcolm Grear
Graphic designer Malcolm Grear’s work is familiar to many Americans, even if his name is not. As the principal at Malcolm Grear Designers from 1960 until his death earlier this year, he was responsible for numerous high profile projects, including the official seals for the United States Department of Health and Human Services and the Veterans Administration, as well as the graphic identity for the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta, including the “Quilt of Leaves,” the hand-held relay torch, and the gold, silver and bronze medals. Grear was Professor Emeritus at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he taught in the Graphic Design department from 1960-98, including four years as its chairman (1965-69). Mr. Grear’s work was featured in the exhibition “Graphic Content” at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati and has been displayed at institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Boston. The traveling exhibition Malcolm Grear: The Art of Design has appeared in major museums and galleries around the US and Canada. Throughout his long and distinguished career, Grear received countless awards and honors, including the Rhode Island Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts (1969); the Citation for Distinguished Service in the Visual Arts from the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (1997); the Claiborne Pell Award for Excellence in the Arts (1998); and five honorary doctorates.
Marc Harrison
Marc Harrison was born on July 1, 1936 in New York City. When he was eleven years old, Harrison suffered a severe brain injury due to a sledding accident in the Bronx, New York. As a result of the accident, he had to relearn basic functions such as walking and talking. It was because of this event and the years of rehabilitation that Harrison gained insight and inspiration for his future work as an industrial designer.
Harrison earned his BFA in industrial design at Pratt Institute in 1958, and his MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1959. After a brief stint of freelance designing in New York City, Harrison took a position teaching at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where he became instrumental in establishing the Division of Architecture and Design. He believed in the importance of organic thought and the inclusion of liberal arts courses to enhance students’ education, making them better designers.
The design philosophy of the time was that products should be designed for those of average shape, size, and ability. Though the intention was that these products would work for as many people as possible, the elderly and disabled found products designed by this method to be difficult to use. Harrison turned this philosophy on its head by deciding that products should be designed for people of all abilities. This was the pioneering of a philosophy that came to be known as Universal Design. Harrison incorporated this design philosophy into projects both at RISD and with his private consulting firm, Marc Harrison Associates.
Perhaps Harrison’s most famous design, which incorporated this philosophy, was the Cuisinart food processor. Taking the previous food processor, Harrison redesigned it with large and easily pressed buttons, large and easily grasped handles, and bold easily readable typeface. The new design was a success. By designing a food processor toward consumers with arthritis and/or poor eyesight, Harrison had created a product that was accessible to people of all abilities. For Cuisinart, that meant a food processor that was extremely popular with the general public.
Towards the end of his life, Harrison became involved with a RISD project, the “Universal Kitchen” based on concepts of Universal Design. The design study, undertaken by RISD students, analyzed every aspect of the kitchen in order to restructure it to meet the needs of varying abilities. Students documented each step in the process of cooking a meal in a conventional kitchen in order to develop a more efficient, time saving, and user-friendly model. Based on their findings, the students built a prototype “Universal Kitchen.” Harrison, who was one of the pioneers of the philosophy of Universal Design, was not able to see the final outcome of the project. On September 22, 1998 Marc Harrison died due to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). The final version of the “Universal Kitchen” was placed on exhibit in October 1998 at the Cooper-Hewitt design museum in New York City.
Martin Keen
Martin Keen is an entrepreneurial leader in industrial design and brand building, and an innovator of manufacturing technologies. His design career spans more than two decades focused on two distinct and crowded product categories: footwear and furniture. He is the founder and visionary force behind KEEN Footwear and Focal Upright. Martin entered footwear first in 1989, then furniture in 2012, and made huge waves in both by questioning the status quo. Martin created entirely new categories within each industry, forcing business leaders to respond. KEEN currently has annual revenues over $300M and is distributed worldwide. Together, KEEN and FocalUpright currently employ over 350 people worldwide. Martin is also a philanthropist: KEEN’s Hybrid.Care Foundation has donated over $7 million to charities worldwide, including the Conservation Alliance, Medicines Global, and the American Red Cross. In Rhode Island, Martin has actively mentored students at The Met School, volunteered as a guest art teacher in the Jamestown School District, and advised start-up entrepreneurs at Betaspring. “Cutting through constraints is the essence of innovative design, and Martin has changed the footwear industry by drilling down instead of spreading out,” said the selection committee. “You can’t do much better in terms of impact and prominence.”
Eugene Lee
Eugene Lee’s career seems like almost too much for one person: He has been the Resident Designer at Trinity Repertory Company since 1967. As Production Designer for Saturday Night Live, he has designed the look of one of the most influential forces in pop culture since the show premiered in 1975. He is a three-time Tony Award winner for his designs on Candide, Wicked and Sweeney Todd, earning him a 2006 induction into the Theater Hall of Fame at Broadway’s Gershwin Theater. Television came calling once again when Eugene was hired to design the sets for the new “Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and “Late Night With Seth Meyers.” Through it all, he has remained dedicated to Rhode Island, not only living and raising his family in Providence, but contributing to the community by helping to refurbish the auditorium at Hope High School, designing fundraisers for WaterFire, and creating a traveling Shakespeare cart for the Brown/Trinity MFA Program. “His commitment to being here and his dedication to Trinity never veered, even with all his worldwide success,” exclaimed the selection committee. “It’s amazing to have someone in our community who is so prominent and highly decorated in his field.”
Kyna Leski
Kyna Leski is a designer, an artist, a teacher, and a writer who seeks creative discovery or, as she puts it, “realizing you do not know what you thought you knew, while expanding what you do.”
As a founding principal of 3six0 Architecture, Leski commits to creative discovery as an efficient and effective approach. Here Leski redefines problems that set in motion the strategy for solutions tailored to the specific needs, limits and situation of each project. The results have been recognized by Rhode Island and Boston AIA and the Boston Society of Architects numerous times. Architectural Record named 3SIXØ one of ten “vanguard” architecture firms emerging worldwide and subsequently recognized 3SIXØ for “Record Interiors.”
As the author of the first semester architecture curriculum at The Rhode Island School of Design, Professor Leski crafts problems which direct students back to their own inquiry as the source for generating ideas. Leski’s pedagogy is the basis of The Making of Design Principles, a book she authored in 2007. Leski served as the Head of the Department of Architecture, Graduate Director and Chief Critic of the RISD European Honors Program in Rome. She was a Visiting Professor, China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, China.
Leski’s house of visual shadows, called Dream House, won first place out of 480 entries in the Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition. Architect Shin Takamatsu called her design “outstanding” and said of it, “Light undergoes variations and dislocations and becomes architecture.” In 1997 the Architectural League of New York selected Leski as a winner of its annual Young Architects Competition and in 2000 she was nominated for a Chrysler Design Award.
In 2015, The MIT Press published, Leski’s book The Storm of Creativity. It is being translated into Russian, Turkish, Korean and Chinese. The illustrations made by Leski for this book are the basis for her animation, “Storm’s-eye View.” Leski has given over 30 talks on creativity across the country—from POP!Tech in Camden, Maine to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California.
Rene Payne
Rene Watkins Payne is the founder and director of FAVOR design & communications, a multi-disciplinary creative studio specializing in brand identity, art direction, and graphic design. Working in the graphic design sector for over 25 years, Rene’s work has spanned the marketplace from community organizations to Fortune 500 companies. Rene launched included, a dedicated initiative of FAVOR to promote social equity, human dignity, and environmental justice.
As a four-year RISD diversity fellow, Rene supported Social Equity and Inclusion initiatives, including developing materials for the Martin Luther King, Jr. lecture series and designing award-winning work showcasing diversity and disabilities through the longstanding RISDiversity community narratives project. Rene’s work continues to impact local, regional and national social equity design initiatives for Harvard’s Office for Diversity Inclusion and Community Partnership, The COVID Black National Task Force initiative, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island, The Daughters of the Movement, and The Emmett Till Memory Project.
Rene is an adjunct professor in the Graphic Design department at RISD, where she earned her BFA in Graphic Design, and she also teaches a course called “Art for Social Change” in partnership with the social justice organization Sankofa.
David Pedrick
David Pedrick is a naval architect and marine engineer. He learned about naval architecture – the architecture of ships – and its application to yacht design soon after he started sailing at an early age. He shaped his love of sailing, eye for aesthetics and talent in science into his career as an industry-leading yacht designer.
Sailing yachts are dynamic works of art – vehicles designed to harness the energy of the wind to overcome the resistance of the sea. Offshore and coastal sailing yachts – David’s core design work – are created to be pleasing to the eye and hand, but must also be engineered for ultimate safety in a hostile, storm-tossed operating environment.
The common goal that owners request of David is for their yachts to be beautiful, comfortable and fast. He and his design team have delivered these qualities in a wide range of yacht types, including winners of the America’s Cup, course record holders in the world’s major ocean races, exquisite custom cruising yachts, offshore sail training sloops, durable production sailboats and concours d’elegance classic yacht restorations.
Yacht designers are the integrators of all aesthetic and mechanical factors that go into making a yacht beautiful, agile and safe. Art and science are forged together through technical disciplines such as specialized structural engineering, computational fluid dynamics, and sailing performance prediction. David’s clients and colleagues value the intuitive design sense, technical rigor and attention to detail that go into each of his firm’s designs.
David is a 1970 graduate of Webb Institute of Naval Architecture with a B.S. in both naval architecture and marine engineering. He began his yacht design career under the mentorship of the renowned Olin Stephens, and established Pedrick Yacht Designs in Newport, RI in 1977. He is a Fellow in the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (SNAME). Past volunteer positions include: chairman of the International Technical Committee for ocean racing; board member and awards judge of the International Superyacht Society; a founding trustee and chairman of the International Yacht Restoration School (IYRS); and a corporation member of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).
Aidan Petrie
As the Co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer of the product development firm Ximedica, Aidan has built and grown a 25+ year design consultancy that employs over 120 people locally, has a marquee client list and is known on a global level. His career in industrial design has spanned from consumer products such as toys and sporting goods, to the design of over-the-counter health products and fully regulated medical devices. Aidan has been granted and/or applied for over 70 national and international patents. During his three decades at the helm of Ximedica, Aidan has affected significant economic and design impact through his nationally recognized product portfolio. However, the selection committee was most impressed by Aidan’s prolific design leadership within the field of industrial design in Rhode Island, noting the “pipeline” of young industrial designers who have worked for Aidan at Ximedica, as well as the number of start-ups that have grown from Aidan’s tutelage. He demands innovative problem solving from both his project teams at Ximedica and his design students at RISD, a mentorship influence that has had a tangible impact on the next generation of industrial designers in Rhode Island.
Burr Sebring
Burr Sebring has a long history of designing silverware and silver pieces in Rhode Island. After serving in the army, Sebring attended the Rochester Institute of Technology’s School of American Craftsmen. While there, he won a national competition in silversmithing. That fortuitous occasion set his path to leaving a grand design legacy in flatware design.
Upon graduating from RIT, Sebring was hired on the spot at Gorham Manufacturing Company, a global silverware powerhouse founded in 1831. Gorham’s legacy includes using the industry’s first Steam Powered Drop press in the United States and being the sole supplier of Tiffany & Co.’s silverware during their time. For the decades leading up to the 20th century, Gorham was at every international fair and won numerous awards.
In 1972, after fourteen years as a designer, Sebring was promoted to Design Director where he stayed until his departure from Gorham in 1981. During his time at Gorham, he crafted several award winning sets and worked globally for over a year across several different Asian countries. In his time at Gorham and after, Sebring has been handcrafting quality silver pieces and silverware sets that enhance the dining experience for their owners.
Sebring’s designs are not just beautiful, they’re a homage to Northeastern culture. Designs of this nature often reflect the different geographical essence, and with this, Sebring’s silverware designs reflect the rustic simplicity present in Northeastern design.
Sebring has been featured in museums across the country, including the RISD Museum of Art. He has designed silverware and decorative silver pieces throughout his entire career, and today, Sebring continues his silversmithing independently at Burr Sebring Designs Limited located at his home in Barrington, RI. Sebring’s most recent projects include a working model ferris wheel which he is in the process of donating to a children’s hospital in Rhode Island. Ultimately, he is trying to realize his dream of getting Providence its own ferris wheel.
Nancy Skolos
Nancy Skolos works with her partner/husband Thomas Wedell to diminish the boundaries between graphic design and photography—creating collaged three-dimensional images influenced by modern painting, technology and architecture. The studio’s work came into its own during the 1980s with clients in the Boston area including Kloss Video Corporation, Boston Acoustics and Digital Equipment Corporation, where the team’s surreal photographic concepts combined with rational typographic structures gave voice to concepts such ’software.’ An Eye Magazine feature on the studio labeled their attitude “techno-cubist.”
Skolos is an AIGA Medalist and AIGA Fellow and an elected member of AGI. The studio’s work has received numerous awards including gold, silver, and bronze prizes in the Warsaw, Lahti and Toyama Poster Biennials and Triennials and has been widely published and exhibited. Their posters are included in the graphic design collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, the Library of Congress, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Israel Museum, the Museum für Gestaltung, the National Museum in Poznan, and many others. They have authored two books: Type, Image, Message, published by Rockport in 2006, and Graphic Design Process, published by Laurence King in 2012.
Rosanne Somerson
Rosanne Somerson is a woodworker, furniture designer, maker, educator and current President of Rhode Island School of Design. Long known as a leader in the studio furniture field, Rosanne Somerson has also earned a growing reputation as an agile, adept and visionary leader in art and design education.
A consummate designer, Somerson maintains her design studio in Fall River, MA, where she designs and makes furniture on commission and furthers her own creative practice. Her work is featured in numerous books and publications, and has been exhibited throughout the US and internationally, including at the Louvre in Paris. Somerson’s furniture is represented in private, corporate and museum collections, most notably at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Fuller Craft Museum, the Huntsville [AL] Museum of Art, the RISD Museum, the Smith College Museum of Art, Yale University Art Gallery and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
An eloquent writer, thought leader and presenter, Somerson is frequently invited to speak at museums, conferences, corporations and colleges around the world. She has served on numerous panels and juries, and appeared in several television segments and videos, including an interview with her in the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art. Throughout her careers, she has earned recognition for her work as a designer, artist and teacher, including two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the James Renwick Alliance’s Distinguished Crafts Educator Award.
Friedrich St. Florian
Friedrich St. Florian’s career as an architect and educator spans more than 55 years, and though his success has taken him all over the world, his commitment to his adopted home of Providence has made him an influential figure in the city’s renaissance. Along with fellow RISD professor William Warner, Friedrich famously helped reimagine the Providence waterfront with a sketch on a restaurant napkin. He has been at RISD for more than half a century, including eight years as the Dean of Architecture and three as Acting Provost. Some of his early works are housed in the permanent collections of the RISD Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He has reshaped not only our state’s capital, but the nation’s as well, winning a national competition to build his most important work, the World War II Memorial in Washington, DC. “Friedrich St. Florian is a titan in the architecture world,” declared the selection committee. “What really elevates him is his strong commitment to teaching. He has continued to teach and mentor throughout a career that has taken him all over the world.”
Nancy Taylor
Nancy Taylor is the founder and principal designer of Taylor Interior Design. Since starting her firm in 1967, she has completed more than 500 projects around the United States and in the Bahamas. Taylor originally trained as a nurse before completing a certificate program at the Rhode Island School of Design, launching her business at a time when sole female proprietors were a rarity in the design industry. She was also the proprietor of 125 Benefit Street Antiques, which closed in 2002. Some of her notable works in Rhode Island include the chapel at Swan Point Cemetery and Athenaeum Row on Benefit Street in Providence, and the Weekapaug Inn in Westerly. Taylor’s work is recognized for her ability to create beautiful spaces with aesthetic flexibility, a note of preservation and a timelessness in the design. Her work has been featured in design magazines such as Rhode Island Monthly, New England Home, Country Living, and the book Spectacular Homes of New England. Taylor is an Allied Member of the American Society of Interior Designers and was inducted into the New England Design Hall of Fame in 2008.
Peter Twombly
For the past 25 years, Peter Twombly has put his construction, design and planning experience to work on houses and commercial projects in and around Rhode Island. New England architecture seems imprinted in his DNA and his work both reflects and abstracts traditional vernacular forms, proportions and detailing. Twombly graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with the American Institute of Architecture Henry Adams Medal and subsequently worked on large-scale institutional projects with Michael Graves and Hansen Lind Meyer. His work has won numerous design awards and has been published in national and regional magazines and books on residential design. He practices with Jim Estes in their Newport firm Estes/Twombly Architects. Yankee Modern, a book of their work, was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2010.
William (Bill) D. Warner
The late Bill Warner was more than an urban designer and architect; he was an iconoclast whose vision and passion, more than anyone else’s, propelled the Providence Renaissance. From the late-1950s and the publication of the College Hill Study until his passing in 2012, Bill had an extraordinarily positive and lasting impact on Rhode Island. The influence of his design concept for the state’s capital city amounts to a master plan for its regeneration from the early 1980s through the turn of the current century. Bill is best known for urban designs that reshaped the city: WaterPlace Park, Memorial Boulevard, the Downtown skating rink, uncovering and relocating the downtown rivers (and constructing the road and pedestrian bridges that cross those rivers), the tranquil riverwalks, and, perhaps most visibly, the arched bridge that carries Interstate 195 across the Providence River at Fox Point. With such a track record, the selection committee had no doubt, “That’s a Hall-of-Famer.” They were particularly impressed with Bill’s ability to get things done despite the number of bureaucratic hurdles he faced in the process of realizing his design visions. The committee noted that Bill’s impact consisted of “changing the face of Rhode island’s capital city.”
