Brigitte Knowles, celebrated architect, professor emerita, and retired senior associate dean at Temple, has died at 82
A groundbreaker as one of the first female architects, she was an original faculty member of Temple’s new Department of Architecture in 1971.
Brigitte Knowles, 82, of Philadelphia, celebrated architect, innovative professor emerita and former chair of the Department of Architecture and Environmental Design at Temple University, and retired senior associate dean of Temple’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture, died Thursday, July 3, of throat cancer at her home in Queen Village.
For nearly 50 years, from 1970 to her retirement in 2018, Professor Knowles was a pioneering expert on architectural history, urban planning, facilities management, and the spirituality of the built environment. A groundbreaker as one of the first female architects, she earned two bachelor’s degrees and a master’s degree in architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, and was an original faculty member of Temple’s new Department of Architecture in 1971.
She was an energetic recruiter and engaging instructor, former students said, and she organized local walking tours and exciting architectural field trips to Spain, Portugal, and elsewhere. She became senior associate dean later and, in 2012, oversaw the department’s move to a larger facility on Temple’s campus and the expansion of the undergraduate and graduate programs.
“Seeing my students was my great love,” she told a Temple newsletter in 2018. “I remember every final thesis project my students worked on.”
Kate Wingert-Playdon, senior associate dean and director of architecture at Temple, said Professor Knowles “has been a mentor to all who she worked with and taught. But her significance as a mentor and role model to those of us who share her sex and gender is particularly important.”
Professor Knowles focused much of her work and research on the sensual aspects of architecture — touch, sound, smell, emotion — and how they might comfort people in stressful situations. She took note of light, shadow, and human sentiment, she said often, as well as structure in building design.
In 2016, she and a student presented “Architecture as a Curative Power” at a conference at Temple. She told a Temple reporter at the event for newswise.com.: “As architects, we’ve lost the sense of what we can do through emotion, memory and imagination. Contemporary design is based on functionality and beauty, but we don’t design for the soul of a human being. … The emotion of the space is frequently missing from what we create.”
She studied with Louis Kahn, Edmund Bacon, and other noted architects at Penn in the 1960s and worked on dozens of commissions in the 1970s and ‘80s with her husband, architect John Knowles, at their BJC Knowles Associates studio. She also designed with architects Roy Vollmer, Mark Ueland, and Tony Junker, and taught at Drexel University and the Philadelphia School for a time.
In tributes, former colleagues called her a “vibrant role model,” “the grandmother of basic design,” and “the soul of Temple’s architectural school.” A former student and colleague said her greatest impact was “the poetry of architecture that she was able to instill in her work as well as those fortunate to be around her.”
Longtime Temple colleague George Claflen said she influenced “literally thousands of students and scores of faculty members and visiting critics.”
She and her husband, also a former chair of Temple’s Department of Architecture, renovated their own Society Hill home in 1974, and it was featured in a three-page photo spread in The Inquirer. They were creative collaborators, their colleagues said, and they designed all kinds of structures, including their own vacation home in Maine.
They also established a traveling scholarship for architecture students at Temple, and alumni recognized her in 2013 by helping to fund what became the popular Knowles Architecture Alumni Lecture series. “Through her teaching and leadership,” the alumni said in recent online post, “[she] has deeply impacted the lives of hundreds of students.”
Brigitte Lieselotte Knechtsberger was born June 24, 1943, in Kesmark, in what is now Slovakia. She and her parents came to North Philadelphia in 1947 and moved to Huntingdon Valley about 10 years later.
She attended Philadelphia High School for Girls at first and graduated in 1961 from Upper Moreland High School in Willow Grove. At Penn, she won a fellowship and extra credit for her impressive field work, and earned a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1965, bachelor’s degree in architecture in 1968, and master’s degree in 1971.
She always drew well and spent many Saturday mornings in art classes at Moore College of Art & Design as a teen. In college, she flirted with being a cartoonist.
She met John Knowles in grad school at Penn, and they married and had a son, Chris. Her husband died in 2018.
Professor Knowles enjoyed swimming and dining out with her son. She was a great cook, he said, and Wiener schnitzel was one of her specialties.
She taught math to Philadelphia Dance Academy students in the 1960s and told her Temple colleagues harrowing stories of her days as a young refugee in Europe. “She was exuberant,” her son said.
She was featured in a 1975 Inquirer story about assertiveness and said: “Teaching architecture is about professional, personal, and inspirational things.”
In her 2018 interview, she said: “We see a lot of dazzling architecture, great facades, exquisite interiors. But does architecture really make us feel good? Does it elevate our spirits? It definitely should.”
In addition to her son, Professor Knowles is survived by a granddaughter and other relatives.
A celebration of her life is to be held later.
Donations in her name may be made to the Temple University Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Institutional Advancement, Box 2890, New York, N,Y, 10116.