John Pangrazio FAIA, FACHA NBBJ Seattle, Washington

Jury Chair

John Pangrazio is widely regarded as one of the country’s leaders in healthcare architecture. He is recognized among healthcare architects for the breadth of his understanding of the issues affecting the healthcare industry and the practice of medicine, for his determination to reach the highest standards in the planning and design of healthcare facilities, and for his influential leadership among healthcare executives and architects. During his 35 plus years in the field, he has been responsible for reshaping the role architects and architecture play in the advancement in the quality of health. Pangrazio has planned and designed more than 100 exceptional projects that have established new precedents for quality and innovation. He has promoted common ground among healthcare institutions, patients, and communities, and has served as a tireless and influential advocate for the architectural profession. Pangrazio’s vision has shaped NBBJ’s extraordinarily successful healthcare practice, leading it to a position of unparalleled influence in the healthcare industry and the number one ranking in the world.

His ongoing research into the relationship between the physical environment and healing has resulted in such pioneering design as: the world’s first Proton Beam Cancer Treatment and Research Facility, at Loma Linda University Medical Center; groundbreaking applications of medical innovations to the design of healing environments for City of Hope National Medical Center; and strategic master plans and designs that shape the future for vast healthcare systems.

William Bain Jr., FAIA, sponsored Pangrazio’s nomination to the AIA College of Fellows, which resulted in his investiture in 1999. In 2004, Pangrazio served as President of the AIA Academy for Health.

Ruth M. Benfield, FACHE Seattle Children’s Hospital Seattle, Washington

Ruth Benfield is Vice President, Psycho-Social Services at Seattle Children’s Hospital. In her more than 30-year career at the hospital, her responsibilities have included multiple clinical programs and sites of care. Her facility responsibilities have included executive sponsorship for the development of the major institution master plan to guide development on the main campus over the coming 20 to 30 years. Outside of planning, her oversight responsibility has included the design and construction of new inpatient and ambulatory and administrative facilities. Benfield is accountable for multiple renovations within the existing facilities over a 20-year timeframe. She is currently responsible for the hospital’s psychiatric program, as well as psycho-social support programs for its patient populations.

Paul Bentel, FAIA Bentel & Bentel Locust Valley, New York

Paul Bentel was born in New York in 1957. He received his undergraduate degree in visual arts at Harvard University. Prior to receiving his graduate degree in architecture at Harvard University, where he was coeditor of

The Harvard Review IV, he was a sculptor in Pietrasanta, Italy. He received his Ph.D. in the history and theory of architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has taught at Harvard and MIT, and was an Assistant Professor at Columbia University for 10 years, where he developed core curriculum courses intended to aid students in their assessment of the cultural value of buildings. He has delivered lectures at Harvard, MIT, Yale, Rhode Island School of Design, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and at Federal Polytechnic University in Zurich.

He is a partner in the studio of Bentel & Bentel, Architects/Planners AIA, and a licensed architect.


Mary-Jean Eastman, FAIA
Perkins Eastman New York, New York

Mary-Jean Eastman is a founding partner of Perkins Eastman and the Managing Principal of the firm’s New York office. Her 30-year career has focused on the potential of built environments to positively impact the quality of life of their users. She has served as design principal for interior design, public buildings, and healthcare facilities for a wide range of institutional and corporate clients.

Eastman has directed diverse, programmatically complex healthcare projects for Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, NYU Langone Medical Center, Mount Sinai Medical Center, and other top academic medical centers and healthcare systems. She concentrates on bringing a hospitality vocabulary into the healthcare environment, and on focusing the design on the patient experience.

She has been active in the New York Chapter of the AIA and served as a Director and member of the Nominating and Honors committees. Eastman is currently a Director of the New York Building Congress and the Salvadori Center. In 2001, she was inducted into Hospitality Design magazine’s Platinum Circle.


Kirk Hamilton, FAIA
Texas A&M University College Station, Texas

Kirk Hamilton is an Associate Professor of Architecture at Texas A&M University. He is a board certified healthcare architect and Founding Principal Emeritus of WHR Architects. Hamilton is a past president of the American College of Healthcare Architects and the AIA Academy of Architecture for Health. He has served on the board of The Center for Health Design for more than two decades and is co-editor of the peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary

Health Environments Research & Design Journal (HERD). He is the co-author of

Evidence-Based Design for Multiple Building Types and the co-author of

Design for Critical Care: An Evidence-Based Approach.

Marlene Imirzian, AIA Marlene Imirzian & Associates, Architects Phoenix, Arizona

Marlene Imirzian, AIA, is a Principal of Marlene Imirzian & Associates Architects, a regional practice with offices in Phoenix, Arizona and Escondido, California. The firm is known for its design excellence, project performance, and as a leader in the integration of sustainable design practices for building for higher education, civic, medical, historic preservation, and commercial and residential clients. Imirzian has been awarded numerous design awards, including local and regional design awards from the American Institute of Architects, and her work has been published internationally. She is a faculty associate at the School of Architecture + Landscape Architecture at the Arizona State University Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. She serves on the alumni board of governors of the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, as a Trustee of the American Institute of Architects Trust, and as an Advisory Group member for the AIA Committee on Design.

A. Ray Pentecost III, DrPh, FAIA, FACHA, LEED AP Clark Nexsen Norfolk, Virginia

Dr. Ray Pentecost is a licensed Architect and a Fellow in the AIA. He is Board Certified in the specialty of healthcare architecture by, and is a Fellow in, the American College of Healthcare Architects. He is a LEED Accredited Professional. Pentecost received his B.A. and B. Arch. degrees from the Rice University School of Architecture in Houston, Texas, and his Master and Doctor of Public Health degrees from the University of Texas, School of Public Health, also in Houston.

Pentecost now serves as the Director of Healthcare Architecture for Clark Nexsen Architecture & Engineering, Norfolk, Virginia. In 2009, he was the national President of the AIA Academy of Architecture of Health, and in 2010 is again serving as the President of that organization.

Healthcare Design 2010 November;10(11):190-191