User:JPRiley/Mendell

Mark Mendell (February 25, 1939 – October 25, 2016) was an American architect in practice in Boston and the Buffalo, New York area from 1971 until his retirement in 2015. He spent the majority of his career with CannonDesign, which he joined in 1974. He became president of the firm in 1992 and led the firm's national and international expansion, growing it into one of the largest in the world.

Life and career
Mark Robert Mendell was born February 25, 1939 in New York City to Hyman Mendell and Irene Lipson Mendell. He was educated at Hobart College and the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating from the latter in 1962 with a BSArch. After postgraduate study at the Polytechnic University of Milan he returned to the United States, joining Campbell, Aldrich & Nulty in Boston. He was made a partner in 1971. While he was a partner of this firm he was partner-in-charge of the Park Science Center (1972) of Simmons University. Campbell, Aldrich & Nulty was dissolved in 1973 and in 1974 he joined CannonDesign, then known as the Cannon Partnership, in Grand Island, New York, as director of design. Among Mendell's earliest and best known projects was the Occidental Chemical Center (1980) in Niagara Falls, New York. This was the first major application in the United States of a double-skin facade. This was built as the headquarters of the Hooker Chemical Company, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, and is now a visitor center.

Other Buffalo area projects in which Mendall mad a major role include the HSBC Atrium (1990), the Burt Flickinger Center (1993) and the terminal of the Buffalo Niagara International Airport (1997). Mendell had a large role in the growth of the firm and its reputation for design excellence. By 1986 he had helped grow the firm into one of the ten largest in the country, with offices in Boston, St. Louis, Washington and New York City in addition to the Grand Island headquarters. It was the only Buffalo firm with a reach outside of the region. In 1992 he was made president of the firm. He retired in 2015.

Mendell was a member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) and was made a Fellow of the AIA in 2003. He was member of the board of directors of the Albright–Knox Art Gallery and of the inaugural dean's council of the School of Architecture and Planning of the University at Buffalo. For his service to the school, after his death a main studio in Edmund B. Hayes Hall was renamed the CannonDesign/Mark Mendell Studio. Interested in preservation, he was a board member of the nonprofit which restored the Darwin D. Martin House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and oversaw the national competition which resulted in the selection of Toshiko Mori as the architect of the new Greatbatch Pavilion visitors' center, completed in 2009.

Personal life
In later life Mendell lived in Weston, Massachusetts, near Boston. Cannon had maintained an office in Boston since 1983. In addition to his earlier commitments in the Buffalo area, in Massachusetts he was a member of the board of the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, of the dean’s council of the Harvard Kennedy School, a board chair of the University of the Middle East Project and a trustee of Lasell College.

A motorcycle collector and racing enthusiast, he was a member of the American Motorcyclist Association and a founder of the Motorcycle Hall of Fame. He led the design team for the hall's museum building, completed in 1999, and served as board chair in 2003.

Mendell was married twice, second to Raquel Maria Halty. He had two children. His son, Nathaniel R. Mendell, was acting United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts from 2021 to 2022. Mendell died October 25, 2016 in Weston at the age of 77.