For release: April 3, 2013
For press information, contact Kimberly Rogers at 901.678.4164.

The 2013 William R. Eubanks Distinguished Lecture Series at the University of Memphis will feature Professor Susan C. Piedmont-Palladino, architect and author, from Washington D.C. The lecture will be held Thursday, April 18 at 6:30 p.m. in the University of Memphis Fogelman Executive Center Lecture Hall.

The event will begin at 6 p.m. with a display of student work in the Fogelman Executive Center atrium. The select work from Interior Design and Architecture students in the Department of Architecture will also be on display during the reception that will follow the lecture. 

Piedmont-Palladino’s lecture, titled “Urbiphilia: Love of cities,” will discuss how sustainable and beautiful habitats for ourselves and other living things sharing our world depend on our seeing the productive relationship between cities and natural systems.

A curator at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., Piedmont-Palladino is a professor of Architecture and coordinator of the graduate program in Urban Design at the Virginia Tech Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center (WAAC). Her current project with the Museum is Intelligent Cities, a multi-faceted initiative funded by the Rockefeller Foundation to investigate the intersection of information technology and cities. Her book Intelligent Cities was published in December 2011.

Before joining the faculty at WAAC, Piedmont-Palladino taught architecture and design at the University of Maryland and at the Catholic University of America. She has lectured and written on sustainability, American urbanism, design-build, and architectural education. She earned a professional Master of Architecture degree from Virginia Tech and holds a Bachelor of Arts in the History of Art from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.

Each year, the William R. Eubanks Distinguished Lecture Series provides students with the opportunity for discussion and insight with recognized leaders in the field.  Alumnus, international interior designer William R. Eubanks established the lecture for the benefit to the student’s professional and practical education.

Eubanks also established the James Weaver Memorial Scholarship in Interior Design, to memorialize his longtime friend, a former Winona, Miss., resident, who died in 1998. The scholarship will be awarded to deserving and qualified students based on merit, with consideration of need, and given to undergraduate students majoring in Interior Design.

For more information, call 901.678.2724.