Contact: Robbie Ward
STARKVILLE, Miss.--A retired member of the Mississippi State architecture faculty is a recent national honoree of the Society of Architectural Historians.
Michael W. Fazio, a professor emeritus at the university, received the society's 2008 Alice Davis Hitchcock Book Award for co-authoring a comprehensive study Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764-1820), the country's first professional architect and engineer.
Latrobe's works include the United States Capitol, White House and Baltimore Cathedral. He also is credited with introducing Gothic and Greek revival architectural styles that became widespread in the 1800s.
Fazio completed the 769-page book (2006, Johns Hopkins University Press), "The Domestic Architecture of Benjamin Henry Latrobe," with Patrick A. Snadon, an interior design professor at the School of Architecture and Interior Design at the University of Cincinnati.
"While weighty and rich in detail, the book does not succumb to either its mass or minutiae," the society declared in its citation of the authors' work. "Fazio and Snadon have important things to say, and they know how to say them."
The Hitchcock Award was established in 1949 to recognize the most distinguished work of architectural history scholarship by North Americans. Only book publishers are allowed to submit nominations, with the final selection made by three members of the society.
Fazio was a founding member of the MSU School of Architecture faculty who taught architectural history, among other courses, during a campus career spanning more than three decades. He holds a doctorate in the history of architecture and urban development from Cornell University.
The school, part of the College of Architecture, Art and Design, honored him with the naming of the Fazio Jury Room in Giles Hall, home of the school and college.
Earlier this year, McGraw-Hill Higher Education published the third edition of "Buildings Across Time: An Introduction to World Architecture." The nation's best-selling architecture history textbook was written by Fazio and former University of Tennessee professors Marian Moffett and Lawrence Wodehouse.
Fazio completed all updates for the third edition after the deaths of his co-authors in 2004 and 2002, respectively.
His current book project is an architectural history of his hometown, tentatively titled "Landscape of Transformations: Architecture and Birmingham, Alabama." It is expected to be released next year by University of Tennessee Press.
Fazio said his personal ties with the Deep South city and key parts of modern U.S. history happening there sparked his interest in the project. The Civil Rights movement is among key topics being covered in the book.
"All of the events that happened occurred around buildings that had meaning to people involved in historic events," Fazio said.
NEWS EDITORS/DIRECTORS: For more information, contact Dr. Fazio at 662-325-2507 or mfazio@caad.msstate.edu.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.