Annette Parisi
While a master’s candidate in architecture at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Annette Parisi, B.P.S. ’93, took a job with a construction company to complement her training in hands-on building. In 1995, she was a construction manager for the FBI’s new Washington Metropolitan Field Office. After the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed, the government stopped work on the FBI Building and redesigned it to prevent the “progressive collapse” that had devastated the Murrah Building. Implementing the new plans went slowly. “Sometimes the security additions just wouldn’t fit,” Parisi explains. “We worked together in the field with the architect and the structural engineer to resolve problems on-the-spot.”
In 2000, Parisi took her first architectural job with RTKL Associates in Washington, D.C., and, in 2004, received her architect’s license. Her previous site experience sparked a love for turning ideas into steel, concrete and glass and placed her in the unique position of being a woman moving between the largely male worlds of construction and design. “In construction, you’ll still encounter inappropriate comments,” she admits. “It can take a tough skin and hard work to gain respect.” Her hard work has led her to discover her gift for creating collaboration throughout the building process.
The professions’ priorities don’t always align, Parisi explains. “Architects sometimes design beautiful things that can’t be easily built; contractors want things built as efficiently as possible; engineers are mainly concerned with how the building systems function.” With her ability to understand each discipline’s different aims and values, Parisi builds team rapport early in the process, preventing conflicts and mistakes that can have a costly “ripple effect,” destroying schedules and budgets.
Collaborative efficiency was key in the Phoenix Project, where Parisi coordinated architectural and structural changes during the Pentagon’s post-9/11 reconstruction. Completed in a year, “it was unusually fast track,” Parisi observes as she recalls the crews working around-the-clock, with volunteers serving them meals. Building teamwork was no less important to her role as coordinator for all the disciplines in the construction of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation Research in White Oak, Maryland. At a recent company party, the team celebrated the results of their collaboration in the building’s lobby, where they had to preserve the three-story-high ceiling, while fitting in a complex system of air vents and electrical systems. Parisi looks forward to another successful outcome, now that she is serving as construction administrator on the Capitol Building underground addition that doubles the building’s square footage.
“I really enjoy research and design,” she says. “But the process doesn’t end until you make it work.” She looks back to her undergraduate professor, Ted Lownie (also a practicing architect), as a model of how to implement theory in actual projects. Furthermore, a studio class taught by four professors strengthened her belief that multiple perspectives reveal the best design solutions. As a professional, Parisi understands that collaboration requires as much problem solving as architectural design. “Architecture is innately a struggle between theory and practice, design and the technical expertise of many groups of people,” she says. “It’s something I’ll be refining throughout my whole career.”
Originally appeared in the Spring/Summer 2005 issue of UB Today as part of the article Creating Innovative Environments: Inside and Out by Tacey A. Roslowski, Ph.D. '91.
