The College of Architecture and Urban Studies in association with the University Libraries of Virginia Tech recently purchased the Marco Frascari Library Collection from Paola Frascari. 

It will rejoin the books Marco Frascari donated to the Center’s Library when he served as the G.T. Ward Professor of Architecture at Virginia Tech in the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center.

Marco Frascari passed away in 2013 in Ottawa, Canada, where he was Director of the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism at Carleton University.

The collection will be housed at the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center located in Old Town Alexandria, Va., in an expanded section of the existing library to be named the Marco and Paola Frascari Room.

Available for use by students, faculty, and visiting scholars, the library will primarily support the activities of the Ph.D. Program in Architecture + Design that Frascari founded. The unique collection of more than five thousand volumes includes rare books from the sixteenth century as well as difficult-to-find contemporary publications. This special collection will be preserved to study Frascari’s intellectual contributions to the field. It will also be actively used to promote Frascari’s Macaronic approach to discover original intellectual connections through the juxtaposition of book volumes.

"The Marco and Paola Frascari book collection is a remarkable compilation of first edition manuscripts as well as monographs that represent the craft of broad-reaching intellectual writing,” said Jack Davis, Reynolds Metals Professor of Architecture and dean of the College of Architecture and Urban Studies.  “During his time as an endowed professor at our Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center, Marco quietly and persistently guided the education of hundreds of students through engagement with these texts. It is a pleasure to have them now available for generations to come.”

The inauguration of the Frascari collection at Virginia Tech will coincide with the upcoming Frascari Symposium II: “Confabulations: Storytelling in Architecture” March 28-29, at the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center at 1001 Prince Street in Old Town Alexandria, Va. The symposium will gather together architectural scholars from around the world who were colleagues or students of Marco Frascari’s work to consider how they have advanced and responded to his intellectual initiatives. The public is welcome to attend, but are asked to register in advance to reserve space.

 

 

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