MacKeith Chairs Designer Advisory Board for New National Memorial

Courtesy of Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation

Members of the Designer Advisory Board for the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation are, from left, Kenneth Foote, Allison Grace Williams, Mary Kay Lanzillotta, Mia Lehrer and Dean Peter MacKeith.

Peter MacKeith, dean of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, has been selected to chair the advisory panel for a new memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., which will honor all who have served and sacrificed in the ongoing war on terrorism. 

MacKeith is one of five nationally recognized leaders in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture and geography selected to serve on the designer advisory board for the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation (GWOTMF). This panel will advise the foundation in its selection of a designer for the memorial — helping to “ensure that the foundation’s evaluation efforts will be conducted according to the highest standards of thoroughness, fairness and transparency,” according to a press release from the foundation.

The Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation tentatively plans for the memorial to be located within a triangular site at 23rd Street NW, Constitution Avenue NW, and Henry Bacon Drive NW, adjacent to the Lincoln Memorial. The foundation was formed in 2015 and has maintained its sole objective of constructing a national memorial since then.

Following recent decisions from the Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission regarding the site selection, the foundation has federal authorization to begin designing a memorial. Those authorizations also move the foundation into the design approval phase of the construction process, after being in site selection and approval phase since August 2017.  

“Peter MacKeith is eminently qualified to chair this panel of diverse and distinguished practitioners of architecture, urban design and geography, and we also appreciate how his perspective is informed by his connections to the American heartland,” said Michael “Rod” Rodriguez, foundation president and CEO. “We seek to build an inclusive, apolitical and reverent memorial that will allow all Americans to honor, heal, be empowered and unite. Our designer advisory board understands this and has done an outstanding job helping identify designers capable of bringing our vision to life. Our global war on terrorism heroes deserve nothing less than a rigorous process, which will culminate with the foundation’s board of directors choosing the winning designer. We are grateful to have the designer advisory board lending their world-class expertise to our work.”   

MacKeith, a nationally recognized design educator and administrator, has been dean and professor of architecture in the Fay Jones School at the U of A since 2014. He received a 2023 Distinguished Professor Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. 

MacKeith chairs the Selection Committee for the Northwest Arkansas Design Excellence Program, a regional initiative of the Walton Family Foundation. Among other competition processes, he organized and guided the international competition process that led to the selection of Grafton Architects, 2020 Pritzker Prize recipients, for the Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation, now in construction for the school and university.

He has held previous academic appointments at Washington University in St. Louis, the Helsinki (Finland) University of Technology, the University of Virginia and Yale University.

“On behalf of the designer advisory board, we are deeply honored to have been asked to assist with the historic work of building a Global War on Terrorism Memorial on the National Mall,” MacKeith said. “We are dedicated to undertaking an impartial and rigorous review process that will lead to the selection of the ideal designer or design team for this nationally significant piece of architecture and landscape architecture. We are grateful to be able to use our gifts in service to country, just as all of those whom the memorial will honor have done and will continue to do.” 

Joining MacKeith on the designer advisory board are Kenneth Foote, chair of the Department of Geography at the University of Connecticut; Mary Kay Lanzillotta, partner at the firm of Hartman-Cox Architects, in Washington, D.C.; Mia Lehrer, FASLA, landscape architect and founder of Studio-MLA, in Los Angeles; and Allison Grace Williams, FAIA, founder of AGWms_studio, an architectural design consultancy in San Francisco. 

“The Board of Directors looks forward to working with the designer advisory board to identify the best candidates to lead the design of a memorial that all Americans can be proud of,” said Ted Skokos, GWOTMF Board Chairman, himself a U of A alumnus with a Bachelor of Science degree and Juris Doctorate. “Given the importance of the memorial as a place for service members and their families to honor, heal, be empowered and unite, we are committed to identifying a designer that will properly translate that vision into a timeless work of public art and national commemoration. The designer advisory board will help the board of directors evaluate potential partners with the utmost impartiality and professionalism — an approach that will also honor those who have already contributed to a memorial funded exclusively by private donations.” 

DESIGNER ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS

Kenneth Foote is the chair of the Department of Geography at the University of Connecticut. He has written extensively on American landscape history, including in his book Shadowed Ground: America’s Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy, which focuses on how violence and tragedy have been marked and memorialized in landscapes. He has served as president of both the National Council for Geographic Education (2006) and the American Association of Geographers (2010-11). He has received major national and international awards for his research, teaching, mentoring and service from the American Association of Geographers, National Council for Geographic Education, University Consortium for Geographic Information Science and the Royal Geographical Society of the United Kingdom.

Mary Kay Lanzillotta is a partner at the firm of Hartman-Cox Architects in Washington, D.C., where she has worked since 1989. She has been responsible for managing complex institutional and historic projects in Washington, D.C., and throughout the country, including the renovation and restoration of the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, the home of Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery. She has also worked on the restoration of the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, the American Pharmacists Association building and The Hay-Adams Hotel, all in Washington, D.C. 

Mia Lehrer, FASLA, is president and founder of Studio-MLA, an international landscape architecture, planning and urban design practice based in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Lehrer is recognized for a research-based design process that advocates for resilient and just relationships between individuals, communities and nature. She has led ambitious public and private projects including Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium, Dallas’ Fair Park Community Park, San Francisco’s Levi’s Plaza, Los Angeles’ Natural History Museum and Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, and many urban river-related civic projects in São Paulo, Los Angeles, Sacramento and around the world. A native of El Salvador and educated at Tufts University and Harvard University GSD, she and the firm received Fast Company’s 2023 Most Innovative Companies Award and the 2021 Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award. She is a commissioner of the L.A. Department of Water and Power and served on President Obama’s U.S. Commission of Fine Arts from 2014-2018.

Allison Grace Williams, FAIA, is the founder of AGWms_studio, an architectural design consultancy in San Francisco. In her 40 years of practice prior to her firm, Williams practiced as a senior associate partner in design with Skidmore Owings & Merrill, a director of design at Perkins+Will, and vice president and western regional design director with AECOM. Her portfolio includes projects such as the August Wilson Center in Pittsburgh; the Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise in Singapore; the New Calexico United States Port of Entry in California; The Princess Nora Abdulrahman University Health Sciences and Research Campus in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and NASA’s Langley and Ames research laboratories. 

About the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design: The Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas houses undergraduate professional design programs of architecture, landscape architecture and interior architecture and design together with a liberal studies program. The school also offers a Master of Design Studies, with concentrations in health and wellness design, resiliency design, integrated wood design, and retail and hospitality design. The DesignIntelligence 2019 School Rankings Survey listed the school among the most hired from architecture, landscape architecture and interior design schools, ranking 10th, 14th and eighth, respectively, as well as 28th among most admired architecture schools.

About the University of Arkansas: As Arkansas' flagship institution, the U of A provides an internationally competitive education in more than 200 academic programs. Founded in 1871, the U of A contributes more than $2.2 billion to Arkansas’ economy through the teaching of new knowledge and skills, entrepreneurship and job development, discovery through research and creative activity while also providing training for professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the U of A among the few U.S. colleges and universities with the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the U of A among the top public universities in the nation. See how the U of A works to build a better world at Arkansas Research and Economic Development News.