Anne Marie Duvall Decker Presents the Next Hyde Lecture

Renowned internationally for her distinct design voice, Anne Marie Duvall Decker, FAIA will be giving the next Hyde lecture titled “Public Work: Foundations” at 4 p.m., November 12, at Richards Hall, room 15, UNL City Campus. This lecture is proudly sponsored by AIA Nebraska.

Duvall Decker is a principal of Duvall Decker Architects, located in Jackson, Mississippi. She and her partner, Roy Decker, founded Duvall Decker in a place defined by both palpable need and engaging culture. The firm is a diverse and expanded practice, employing planning, development, design and building care to promote the quality of the built environment and the health and well-being of its inhabitants. Duvall Decker delivers design excellence and promotes social, economic and environmental quality, no matter the scope, type, budget, or scale of the project.

As an amateur pianist and composer, Duvall Decker sees architecture as an instrument, allowing the transcendent to resonate among the conditions of the physical environment. Duvall Decker is most comfortable putting buildings and documents together with everyone in the studio, finding ways to be efficient and making time for design quality and joy in the work. She also is a recognized leader to the advancement of the profession; teaching, lecturing, writing, working on design juries and serving the American Institute of Architects in various capacities at the state and national level.

For this lecture, Duvall Decker shares her firm’s philosophy and approach to design, the built environment and how it relates to and impacts its surrounding community.

“Architecture can promote cultural growth by becoming alive in our experience, placing us between comfort and challenge, the known and the curious,” said Duvall Decker. “Architecture is not simply a thing, but a transaction between us and our environment. In this way, architecture can expand our senses, capacity and understanding of who we are and who we want to be.”

She explains, each new or renovated building changes its community. These interventions have consequences in the lives of all of the people who encounter them over all of the years they exist. Architects face the challenges of program, budget and schedule in every project, but the most important challenge is to find the public value of each project, no matter the type, outside of its lot lines.

The work of Duvall Decker Architects is hopeful speculation through an expanded practice that includes architectural design, community planning, real estate development and building care. In over twenty years of doing this work, Duvall Decker Architects has recorded what they consider their “foundations.” These foundations are their assumptions, principles, propositions, lessons, inspirations and aspirations for both the how and the why of their practice. This lecture explores the work through the lenses of several of Duvall Decker’s foundations.

This presentation is part of the College of Architecture’s 2021-2022 Hyde Lecture Series featuring speakers from across disciplines that are united under the common theme of “Emerging Opportunities for Equality in Planning and Design.” The series focuses on the anticipated “new normal” and looks to draw insight and explore what solutions planners and designers can offer in the Post-Pandemic Future.

The college’s Hyde Lecture Series is a long-standing, endowed, public program. Each year the college hosts compelling speakers in the fields of architecture, interior design, landscape architecture and planning that enrich the ongoing dialog around agendas which are paramount to the design disciplines and our graduates.

For questions, email Kerry McCullough-Vondrak at kerry.vondrak@unl.edu.