"Physical Delineations"

William E. Massie is a principal architect with Massie Architecture in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., and architect-in-residence and head of the architecture department at Cranbrook Academy of Art, also in Bloomfield Hills.

Massie received a Bachelor of Fine Art in Architectural Studies from Parsons School of Design in New York. He subsequently received a Master of Architecture from Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture. Upon graduation he worked for Robertson + McAnulty Architects and James Stewart Polshek and Partners.

In 1993, he started his own company while simultaneously accepting a teaching position in the Graduate School of Architecture at Columbia University, where he was appointed as the Coordinator for Building Technologies Research.

Massie is also a tenured professor of architecture at Rensselear Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. He has taught at Montana State University in Bozeman, Mont., and at Parsons School of Design in New York. He has participated as a visiting critic at many institutions nationally including, Harvard, Yale, California Polytechnic Institute and Lawrence Technological University. In 2005, he participated as the keynote speaker and appointed Bruce Goff Chair at the University of Oklahoma on the future of technology and digital processes in architecture and architectural education.

Massie’s work utilizes computer applications and digital information as a way of redefining “formal architectural construct" – a synthesis of ideas linked to construction in conjunction with the development of a theoretical position, all in support of an attempt to redefine architectural practice and making.

His research in computer applications in architectural construction has been recognized by Architecture Magazine in back-to-back Research Awards – “Augmented Reality in Architectural Construction," in association with Tony Webster, Steve Feiner and Ted Kreuger, and “Virtual Model to Actual Construct." Massie has also received Progressive Architecture awards from Architecture Magazine for the design of the “Big Belt House," located in the foothills of the Big Belt Mountains in Montana, and for the design of “A House for a Photographer." He has been an invited lecturer at more than 50 national and international institutions, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The National Building Museum in Washington, and The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Massie was selected as the winner of the Museum of Modern Art’s Young Architects Program Competition for his project “Playa Urbana/Urban Beach," which was installed in the courtyard of the P.S.1 Museum located in Long Island City, New York. The Museum of Modern Art acquired a scaled model of the "Big Belt House" as part of their permanent collection. Massie’s has been included in many museum exhibitions, including the National Building Museum in Washington, the Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Germany, and, most notably, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Massie will present a lecture titled “Physical Delineations" at 5:30 p.m. Jan. 23 in Hembree Auditorium, in the Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences Building (Room 107E), at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

This is the Charles Thompson Memorial Lecture, sponsored by Cromwell Architects Engineers, in the 2011-12 Fay Jones School of Architecture lecture series.