Skip To Top Navigation Skip To Content Skip To Footer
Mayfield Lecture to Feature Architect of 9/11 Pentagon Memorial Impact
Fairmont State News

Mayfield Lecture to Feature Architect of 9/11 Pentagon Memorial

Oct 06, 2016

The Fairmont State University Architecture Program will present the Mayfield Lecture 2016, featuring Julie Beckman, who with her partner designed the 9/11 Pentagon Memorial in Arlington, Va.

The event will begin with a reception at 6 p.m. following with the lecture at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 20, in Room 305 of the Engineering Technology Building on the main campus. The lecture topic will be “Architecture and Community.” The event is presented in partnership with American Institute of Architects West Virginia and is generously supported by the West Virginia Foundation for Architecture.

The Mayfield Lecture, named for Jeffrey Mayfield, Fairmont State alumnus and architecture professor, honors the “spirit and dedication” that Mayfield exhibited toward the exploration, craft and profession of architecture. The mission of the Mayfield Lecture is to encourage a sense of community between architectural education, the profession and the public by influencing the educational, economic and cultural well-being of our region through the dissemination of architectural knowledge.

Julie Beckman is the Director of Student Development and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the College of Architecture + Design at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Born and raised in Northern New Jersey, she has always been fascinated by buildings and the cities they fill. She has lived throughout the Northeast Corridor and studied abroad in Florence, Italy. Beckman earned a Bachelor of Arts in the Growth and Structure of Cities from Bryn Mawr College in 1995 and a Master of Architecture from Columbia University’s GSAPP in 2001. Previously, Beckman served as a full-time lecturer, graduate-studio critic and coordinator of undergraduate design studios as well as Director of Student Services for the Architecture Department at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Design (2006–2013). Additionally at PennDesign, she co-led a seminar-studio research sequence Design for Impact, which has focused on long-term disaster recovery in Haiti’s Port au Prince as well as new strategic uses for Philadelphia’s vast inventory of vacant properties. She worked for over three years in retail design and development with clients such as Calvin Klein Jeans, Donna Karan and Ralph Lauren Polo. 

In practice, she and her partner, Keith Kaseman launched their design firm, KBAS in 2002 following the unanimous selection of their design proposal for the Pentagon Memorial in Arlington, Va., which opened to the public in on the seventh anniversary of the attacks. In addition, KBAS was commissioned to design a memorial to the Space Shuttle Columbia and its crew in Nacogdoches, Texas, which is still in schematics. Compact and agile, KBAS flexes its robust capacity for research and development, spatial exploration, advanced production, geometric resolution and material experimentation through all of its work.

For more information about the Pentagon Memorial and KBAS, visit http://kbas.co/home-3/uncategorized/pentagon-memorial.

ArchitectureCollege of Science and TechnologyJulie BeckmanMayfield Lecture