Crosby Hall renovation awarded grand prize by AIA Buffalo/WNY

The renovation of Crosby Hall received the Buffalo/WNY Architecture Award, the top prize awarded by the Buffalo/WNY chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), at the chapter’s recent Architecture Design Awards program.

The LEED Gold-certified renovation of Crosby included a full modernization of the 90-year-old South Campus building, led by award-winning New York City-based firm Andrew Berman Architect PPLC. The plans reimagined the space as studios, and fabrication and instructional space for the 5,000 architecture students in the School of Architecture and Planning. The revitalization is part of UB’s Comprehensive Master Plan, which calls for the South Campus to be revitalized into a Professional Studies Center of Excellence.

“When we plan to renovate any building on that (South) campus, we seek to restore the building’s historic integrity and transform it to meet the pedagogical needs of our students,” explains Kelly Hayes McAlonie, director of campus planning. “Crosby Hall was originally designed by famed Buffalo architect Edward B. Green. We intended to restore the building historically and provide inspiring studio and teaching spaces for the School of Architecture and Planning’s undergraduate programs.”

Planning for the renovation began with the 2016 remodel of Hayes Hall, which included the basement of Crosby Hall. McAlonie says this gave faculty the opportunity to imagine the types of spaces that would support their teaching.

The building was designed to create a sense of community for the students. Studios and classrooms have a neutral palette and are filled with natural light to support and elevate the students’ work, with spaces threaded together by learning landscapes — student spaces that foster community and belonging. Each studio has teaching space, and each classroom has pin-up space for studio reviews. “Although the classrooms are centrally scheduled, they were designed with the school’s pedagogy in mind,” McAlonie notes. “Our architecture and planning students spend many hours in studio after classes and on weekends. We wanted then to feel safe and supported.”

The project also included creation of two sculpture gardens, one at the west entrance and the other at the east entrance of the symmetrical building, which McAlonie says creates a dynamic campus experience that extends beyond the buildings and unites campus landscapes.

“The success of this project lies in its simplicity and elegance,” the jury wrote its award announcement. “The jury appreciated the thoughtful restoration of the exterior, as well as the refined interior detailing. The materials and details are quiet, respecting the existing building and allowing the space and natural light to take center stage on the building’s interior. The sustainable achievements of the project, both LEED Gold Certification and all-electric Net Zero, are also noteworthy and commendable.”

The renovation was part of UB’s Climate Action goal toward a net-zero emissions campus.

AIA Buffalo/WNY also honored UB architecture student Pouya Pakkhesal with its Student Project Award for his spring 2025 thesis, “The Unfinished Tribute: A Memorial to the Iranian Protests.”

Pakkhesal sited the proposed monument beside the abandoned Iranian Embassy in Washington, D.C., and it winds into the neighboring Woodland-Normanstone Park, expressing the pain of victims through distance and form.

The project draws from Pakkhesal’s own survivor’s guilt for leaving Tehran as an immigrant to the United States. “I wanted to create a space that honors their struggles, not as a fixed monument, but as a living memorial that can grow and adapt, carrying memory, acknowledging loss, and offering hope without claiming to resolve what remains unfinished,” he says.

Pakkhesal explains that the concrete monument acts as a forward-thinking dialogue to its rectilinear, modernist predecessor — the abandoned embassy. A Memorial Garden consists of elevated, interconnected curvilinear walkways made of simple timber boardwalks, scaled to 25 lives lost or detained per linear foot, or step. “As more protests and uprisings unfortunately unfold, more paths can be simply paved into the unfinished tribute until it no longer needs to grow,” he says.

Pakkhesal credits School of Architecture and Planning faculty for the opportunity to pursue a topic bigger than himself. “My chair, Professor Jin Young Song, and my adviser, Gregory Delaney, were incredible mentors. Jin Young’s work with memorial architecture, especially the 5/14 Memorial, showed me how architectural form and movement can convey grief and meaning. Greg’s expertise in memorial theory and history helped shape the thesis into a unique approach to commemorating ongoing struggles,” he says.

The jury was “struck [by the project’s] strength of concept, aiming to create a memorial that is a living act of remembrance.”

The local AIA chapter also recognized Studio North Architecture — a Buffalo-based firm led by Christopher Romano, assistant professor in the Department of Architecture; Lukas Fetzko, UB volunteer; and Michael Hoover, adjunct instructor in the Department of Architecture — with the Design Award for its Reveal/ Conceal project. The project designed two additions into a composition of three buildings dating back to 1895.