RADFORD – The New River Train Observatory on the grounds of Glencoe Mansion, Museum, and Gallery has been named a national design winner.
Virginia Tech professors Edward Becker and Kay Edge, the architects behind the train observatory, recently won an award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA). They won in the Design-Build category for the 2022 Architectural Education Awards, which honors the best practices in school-based design-build projects.
The Architectural Education Awards honor architectural educators for exemplary work in areas such as building design, community collaborations, scholarship, and service. The award-winning professors inspire and challenge students, contribute to the profession’s knowledge base, and extend their work beyond the borders of academia into practice and the public sector.
The train observatory is part of the Radford Cultural Heritage Park, adjacent to Glencoe, which features a bronze statue of Mary Draper Ingles and several interpretive panels of historical information. The observatory opened in 2019 after it was designed and constructed by Becker, Edge, and their students in the Virginia Tech School of Architecture and Design in conjunction with the City of Radford and its tourism department.
