Mary Potter Wins AIA Triangle Design Award

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Our design for transformation of the National Mary Potter Club followed up its recent P/A award by receiving an AIA Triangle Design award. Carla Swickerath, Partner at Studio Libeskind, chaired this year’s design awards program.  She said the work from this year “ inspired [the jury] to think and consider what's important in design and architecture these days” and the projects that stood out to her and the jury were the ones that “impacted their communities and [the projects that] really sought to rethink what's valuable in design.”

The Mary Potter Academy was founded in Oxford, North Carolina by Dr. George Shaw in 1888 as a boarding school for African American children. Historically, the school was the epicenter for the black community during the Jim Crow and segregation periods, providing a nurturing, communal environment, generating a strong black middle class, and serving as the incubator for many black leaders. Starting with desegregation in the 1970s, the campus gradually eroded and dwindled as resources, funding, faculty, and students were pulled to other schools. By the 21st century, only three buildings—each in various stages of disrepair—from the original campus remained.

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Edwin Harris