Natalie de Blois at 100

Gabrielle Esperdy is an architectural and urban historian working on the intersection of architecture, consumerism, and modernism in metropolitan landscapes. She is particularly interested in minor or everyday buildings and in the ways that social, economic, and political issues shape the built environment, both historically and today. Gabrielle’s research also looks at the architecture profession as it is shaped by social and cultural concerns, including gender, ethnicity, and class. She is the author of Modernizing Main Street (University of Chicago Press, 2008) and American Autopia (University of Virginia Press, 2019). She is Editor of SAH Archipedia/Buildings of the United States and is Professor of Architecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, where she has taught since 2001.

Jana McCann is an Austin-based architect/urban designer and CEO of McCann Adams Studio. Formerly with ROMA and prior to that, Urban Design Officer for the City of Austin, she has extensive experience in transit facility design and transit-oriented development planning, streetscape and public space design, historic preservation and adaptive re-use, as well as in management of large-scale civic projects. She is a frequent presenter at universities and professional conferences, including the American Institute of Architects, the American Planning Association, the Urban Land Institute, the International Downtown Association, and the Mayors Institute of City Design.

Margaret McCurry is a partner of Tigerman McCurry Architects and the recipient of Honor Awards from both the AIA National and Chicago Chapters as well as Interior Design Awards from IIDA and ASID. Her projects have been published widely in architectural and interior magazines and exhibited at museums and galleries in the US and abroad. She has lectured at design conferences, schools of architecture and taught design studios. The author of two monographs, Margaret McCurry: Constructing Twenty-Five Short Stories (The Monacelli Press, 2000) and Distillations: The Architecture of Margaret McCurry (ORO Editions, 2011), McCurry is former Chair of the National AIA Committee on Design and has been President of the Alumni Council of Harvard’s GSD, Director of the Alumni Association (HAA), and President of the Harvard Club of Chicago.

Carol Ross Barney, FAIA, is the founder and president of Ross Barney Architects. She is responsible for the design excellence of all projects undertaken by the studio. A native Chicagoan, Carol has developed a keen understanding of the special needs of institutional and public clients which has produced distinctive structures that have become cultural icons. Her work has been published in national/ international journals and has been exhibited in Chicago, New York, Washington D.C. and San Francisco. Under her leadership, Ross Barney Architects has received more than 60 major awards, including 4 National AIA awards, 2 COTE Top Ten awards and the 1995 AIA Illinois Firm of the Year. In 2005, Carol received the American Institute of Architects Thomas Jefferson Award for Public Architecture, acknowledging a distinguished career and dedication to Architecture in the public realm.