Dean Malo A. Hutson and Professor Elgin Cleckley of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, have announced a current architecture course being taught by Professor Cleckley named the “2021 Edward Wayne Barnett Design Research Studio.” The studio investigates the New York City harbor – researching its history and its embedded significance as a place of arrival, departure, origins and transformation.
The students have developed proposals for a new pier at the harbor that serves as a place to build community – finding ways to design how form takes on fantasy as one extends into the water and memory takes on new cultural dimensions in scale and material through architecture. They showed how Barnett’s legacy remains important to them at the school and continues to inspire their students, according to the professor.
A Barnett Studio discussion and reception was held at the University of Virginia School of Architecture on Thursday, Nov. 18. Judy Barnett, Eddie’s sister, and Rosalie H. Goad, friend of the family, attended.
Barnett, who died in 2009, was born in Botetourt County, the son of the late Howard E. and Flora J. Barnett. He attended Academy Hill and Central Academy in Fincastle, and graduated from James River High School in 1968 as salutatorian of his class. His outstanding academic achievement at a young age led the way to his enrollment at the University of Virginia where he received his undergraduate degree (Bachelor of Architecture) from the School of Architecture in 1972. Barnett continued his education in architecture by receiving his master’s degree from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design where he was named a Walter F. Bogner Scholar in Architecture.
