Faculty News:

Emer. Prof. Patrick Quinn wins ACSF Outstanding Achievement Award.

Designer of sacred space, scholar of religious architecture and art, and supporter of the Architecture, Culture, and Spirituality Forum [ACSF] since its founding, Patrick J. Quinn has won the ACSF’s 2022 Award for Outstanding Achievement. The purpose of the award is to recognize, celebrate, and raise public awareness of exceptional work that significantly advances the mission of the ACSF in architecture, landscape architecture, art, design, urbanism, planning, and related fields. “As an architect, professor, scholar, and champion of spiritual architecture,” stated the ACSF Board of Directors, “Patrick Quinn embodies the very values that the Forum promotes through its work.”

Quinn, a native of Ireland, was educated in University College Dublin and later at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Design, where he studied under architect Louis Kahn. As a practitioner Quinn has focused on the design of spiritual architecture. His buildings have won an AIA National Design Award, Liturgical Conference Awards, and have been published in Art d’Eglise, Liturgical Arts, Faith & Form, Architectural Record, Progressive Architecture, Kunstliche Kunstblatter, and other international publications.

After teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1971 Quinn became Dean of the School of Architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and then Institute Professor of Architecture from 1980 to 1996. He is currently RPI Institute Professor Emeritus. A national president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, a winner of the Rome Prize in Architecture, and a Fulbright Senior Lecturer at CEPT University at Ahmedabad, India, Quinn has been a visiting professor and critic at universities in the US and abroad. He has presented lectures on sacred architecture, design, and art to academic, professional, and public audiences in over 50 cities and universities on four continents.

Quinn’s prolific writings on religious architecture and art have been published in the US, France, Belgium, Spain, Germany, England, Canada, and Venezuela. Currently he is an editor of The Cambridge Guide to the Architecture of Christianity, about to be released by Cambridge University Press. To mark the ACSF award, Quinn will deliver a lecture at ACSF’s 2022 symposium at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater in June (visit acsforum.org for more information on the event).

Members of ACSF believe that the design and experience of the built environment can assist the spiritual development of humanity in service of addressing some of the world’s most pressing issues. The mission of the ACSF is to provide an international forum for scholarship, education, practice, and advocacy regarding the cultural and spiritual significance of the built environment. More information about the ACSF and the Award can be found at acsforum.org.