Class Notes

Peter Bafitis (B.Arch. ’81), AIA, is principal of architecture firm Rothzeid Kaiserman Thomson & Bee. The firm, in honor of its 50-year anniversary in New York City, has agreed to donate 50 trees to be planted in the city’s public parks and streets throughout the five boroughs.

Charles Belfoure (B.Arch. ’83), author of the newly published novel The Paris Architect (October 2013), has earned the kudos of The New Yorker writer and best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell. The Guardian asked established writers and literary critics for their favorite books of 2013, and Gladwell commended Belfoure’s historical fiction as “a beautiful and elegant account of an ordinary man's unexpected and reluctant descent into heroism during the Second World War.” Belfoure taught site design at Pratt from 1990 to 1995.

Matthew Deleget (M.F.A. Painting; M.S. Theory, Criticism, and History of Art, Design and Architecture ’97) will exhibit work in the 2014 Whitney Biennale. An abstract painter and curator, Deleget is also the founder of MINUS SPACE, a platform for reductive art based in Brooklyn, New York. 

Ted Lewin (B.F.A. Illustration ’56) and his wife, Betsy Lewin (B.F.A. Illustration '59), are proud to have been supporting  an endowment scholarship with Pratt Institute to support students in illustration. Lewin has illustrated more than 100 books for young adults and children over the past 20 years, including the award-winning Market! (Harper Collins) and Peppe the Lamplighter, which received a Caldecott Honor. His most recent work is What Am I? Where Am I? (I Like to Read), published by Holiday House.

Mitchell Silver (B.Arch./M.S. Planning Combined Degree ’87), Chief Planning and Development Officer and Director, Department of City Planning for the City of Raleigh, has been named one of the world’s top 100 City Innovators by United Business Media’s Future Cities. The company issued a report listing the top 100 innovators in 10 categories and bestowed the title on Silver in the category of urban policy.