During the Spring 2016 semester, the college’s schools and departments each held award ceremonies to honor and recognize faculty, students, alumni and friends. Below is the listing of the top awards recipients.
Architecture:
Lifetime Achievement Award
Karl Thorne
Distinguished Service Award
Franca Stocco
Young Architects Design Award
Kelly Ard Haigh
Design Excellence Award
Kathryn Dean
Landscape Architecture:
Landscape Architecture Distinguished Service Award
Nicole Plunkett
Architecture:
Lifetime Achievement Award
Karl Thorne
Born in Jamaica, Karl Thorne, FAIA, received a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Illinois in 1969 and a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1970 where he studied under Louis Kahn.
Karl’s early professional experience included two years in Jamaica as a draftsman with Wilson Chong Architect and two years in New York City with Office of Alfred Easton Poor now Swanke Hayden Connell until 1965.
Karl Thorne is an Emeritus Professor of Architecture at the University of Florida’s School of Architecture where he had been on the faculty since 1978 until his retirement in 2008. He was also President of Karl Thorne Architects, Inc., Architects/Planners which he established in 1980. His diverse practice focused primarily on educational architecture and includes the design of such projects as the George C. Kirkpatrick, Jr. Criminal Justice Training Center at Santa Fe College in Gainesville and the Frederick Humphreys Science and Research Center at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee. His firm designed the new school of Journalism & Graphic Communication and also a museum addition to the historic Camegie Library at Florida A&M University.
The firm has been the recipient of numerous design awards. These include the 1988 Excellence in Architecture Award from the North Florida Chapter of the AIA for the Pheo Medical Center in Jacksonville, Florida, the 1991 Excellence in Architecture Award from the National Association of Minority Architects for the Coleman Library addition and renovation at Florida A&M University and most recently a 2002 AIA Florida Unbuilt Design Award for the Conservancy: a conservation community development.
Professor Thorne’s professional Activities include the National Organization of Minority Architects, National Treasurer 1988-1990, South Region Vice President 1990-1992, the American Institute of Architects Florida North Chapter Vice-President 1987, President 1988. And the Florida Association of the AIA Vice-President 1992-1994.
Professor Thorne served as a member of the Florida Building Commission from 1996 to 2004. In 1998 he was a recipient for the Florida AIA Anthony Pullara Memorial Award for outstanding service to the profession. In 1998 he was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects. In 2006 he was awarded the AIA Florida Gold Medal for leadership and distinguished service to the profession and in 2009 the William G. McMinn Award for Outstanding Architecture Education Contributions.
Distinguished Service Award
Franca Stocco
Professor Stocco was born in Canada and studied economics and political science at the University of Padova in Italy. Interested in international experiences, she started her professional career working for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a consultant civilian, and later she built a solid management experience working in Asia for Italian export company. In 1993, by recommendation of the late Professor Bernard Voichysonk, and after a period of internship, the School of Architecture of the University of Florida appointed her as the Program Director of the Vicenza Institute of Architecture of the University of Florida located in Vicenza, Italy (VIA).
For the past 23 years, she has directed the Italian logistical end of the program, collaborated in the design and organization of the educational experience of all of its architectural tours, and taught Italian language and culture. In the process – what for her has been a job of continuous learning centered in the education of architecture – she has come in contact and enhanced the lives of hundreds of foreign architectural students, while mostly American, also from all over the world.
Young Architects Design Award
Kelly Ard Haigh
B.Des 2005, M.Arch 2007, MSAS 2008
Kelly Haigh is a project architect at designLAB architects. She served as lead designer for the Emery Community Arts Center and led the design for the interior transformation of the Claire T. Carney Library at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
Kelly embraces the challenge of articulating the character of a place and vision of the client into a built form. She roots artistic expression within a rational framework, believing that meaningful space emerges from a critical attention to purpose. She enjoys the role of facilitator between client and contractor, building and site, detail and whole.
Kelly received her Bachelors of Design, Masters of Architecture, and Masters of Science in Architecture Pedagogy from the University of Florida. She has maintained her commitment to academics while advancing her professional credentials through her teaching positions at the Boston Architectural College, Roger Williams University, and Northeastern University.
As a fourth generation native of the small town of Okeechobee Florida, Kelly has learned the value of establishing strong ties between personal, professional, and civic engagement. Kelly has brought this value to Boston, where she and her husband, Doug, enjoy participating the their ever-transforming Southie community with their son, Lakin, and dog, Simon.
Design Excellence Award
Kathryn Dean
An architect, scholar, and educator since the inception of her career. First selected for the American Academy Rome Prize Fellowship in 1987, then the Young Architects Award from Progressive Architecture in 1993, and the Emerging Voices Award from the Architectural League of New York in 1997. Her firm, Dean/Wolf Architects, is consistently published internationally in publications such as Architectural Record, Architectural Review, Architecture, and GA. Projects have garnered numerous design excellence recognitions by inclusion in multiple books on architecture such as New American House, New American Townhouse, New American Apartment, New Architectural Interiors, and The Urban House. Her work has received multiple National, NY State, and NYC AIA honor award citations.
Author of Constructive Practices: Between Economy and Desire, published by Columbia University in 2008, as well as the 2011 Princeton Architectural Press monograph Dean/Wolf Architects: Constructive Continuum, Kathryn is committed to both teaching and professional practice. She started her academic career teaching in the advanced graduate studios at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. She continued teaching there for 17 years, serving as an Assistant Professor from 2000-2008.
Currently the JoAnne Stolaroff Cotsen Professor of Architecture, she is the first woman to hold an endowed chair in the WUSTL Graduate School of Architecture. She continues to teach and publish while maintaining her Manhattan office.
Landscape Architecture:
Landscape Architecture Distinguished Service Award
Nicole Plunkett
BLA 2010
Nicole Plunkett is a landscape architect and project manager with Cotleur & Hearing in Jupiter, Florida. She received her Bachelor of Landscape Architecture and a Minor in Environmental Studies from the University of Florida in 2010 (Go Gators!) and was a participant in the Paris Research Center Study Abroad Program. Nicole is currently serving as the Palm Beach / Treasure Coast Chair for the Florida Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects (FLASLA) and is the founder and current chair for Future Landscape Architects of America (FLAA). Traveling and designing are passions for Nicole as well as spending time with her family in Palm Beach Gardens.