Associate Partner Mark Wagner has extensive experience in the design of award winning cultural projects. Through more than 30 years of experience, he has an established history of leading projects from initial planning and conceptualization, to high quality built outcomes. With an interest in complex projects in the public realm, his career has engaged in a diverse spectrum of building typologies. His professional pursuits have centered on experience based design, focusing on human interaction with space, program and context. As an experienced architect and designer his passion for thoughtful design solutions and ability to navigate many diverse complexities has placed him in leadership role of the firms most challenging projects. His professional focus continues to be the creation of a built environment that serves the programmatic mission of purpose and find its place in the surrounding community of which it ultimately belongs.
His work as Project Architect and Designer for the National September 11 Memorial Museum was conceptualized by personal experiences, and is an exploration of memory, authenticity, scale, and experience. It was designed around the in-situ artifacts at the site and the artifacts recovered from the site during site cleanup and recovery. During the design and construction phases of the project he actively engaged with clients, stakeholders, and the exhibit design team on key design issues, including major decisions about large artifact selection and placement and in-situ artifacts which were incorporated into the architecture of the museum. He was also charged with overseeing the daily progress of the Museum’s design and construction, navigating many building challenges due to the complexity of the numerous integrated construction projects at the World Trade Center site. His role on the project involved coordination and consultation with a consortium of museum representatives and government agencies including the NY State Museum, The Museum of the City of NY, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Park Service, The National Trust for Historic Preservation, the FBI and the NYPD.
His familiarity with the details of the World Trade Center site date back to his role as Project Architect for the World Trade Center Archive, a project involving the on-site selection and preservation of over 1,000 artifacts from Ground Zero immediately following the attacks on September 11, 2001. Many of these artifacts are now part of the permanent collection installed at the 9/11 Museum. During the archiving and preservation process and throughout his work on the design and construction of the 9/11 Museum he remained involved with the preservation and final disposition of the collected archive. Throughout this process he had the opportunity to work closely with various museums and organizations across the country offering his unique understanding of the artifacts, their history and the complex issues relating to their preservation and installation.
Mr. Wagner has directed many cultural projects from early planning and fundraising phases through design and construction. As project director for the firm’s IDIQ contract with the National Park Service he has contributed to a study which reestablishes the basic mission, needs and requirements of a “21st Century Visitor and Interpretive Center,” completed several predesign planning studies for NPS visitor centers. His work with the NPS also included the rehabilitation of the Visitor Center at Valley Forge National Park, which involves bringing out of date systems up to current code requirements and developing accessibility design solutions, and an Emergency and Long Term Museum Collections Protection Conservation and Storage project at Ellis Island, which involved the stabilization and analysis of over one million items of the museum’s collection and historic artifacts. With the recent completion of the firms design and renovation of the Hall of Gems and Minerals at the American Museum of Natural History he continues his work there towards the completion of the Gilder Center currently in construction.
