Armand P. Bartos (AR 1935) and his wife Celeste G. Bartos have together provided a gift of $1 million to name the primary presentation facility in the School of Architecture and Planning and provide for its operational endowment.
The Celeste and Armand Bartos Visualization Center (Rm 7-431) was dedicated on Friday, Oct. 22 at an on-site event hosted by William Mitchell, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning.
Previously known as the Advanced Visualization Theater (AVT), the center is used for presentations by architecture and planning students, faculty and visitors. The Bartoses' naming gift has enabled MIT to create an endowed fund that allows the School of Architecture and Planning to maintain the center, update its technology and provide direct support to projects using the facility.
ARTS SUPPORTERS
Longtime supporters of the arts and architecture at MIT and members of the Council for the Arts at MIT, the Bartoses have a history of supporting facilities which advance both architecture and affiliated media technology. In the 1980s they made two $1 million gifts in support of what became the Wiesner Building, and named the Bartos Theater therein. In the early 1990s they gave gifts totaling $100,000 toward the Rotch Library expansion project in the School of Architecture.
Mr. Bartos, a consulting partner in the New York firm of Bartos & Rhodes Architects, received his bachelor's degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania in 1934 and his master's degree in architecture from MIT in 1935. He was a partner with Kiesler and Bartos in New York City, from 1957-62, and then became principal partner at Armand Bartos and Associates, NYC in 1962.
Mrs. Bartos, a member of the Corporation Visiting Committee to the MIT Department of Architecture, is a benefactor of the New York Public Library and the Museum of Modern Art and a well-known supporter of film preservation and history.
The Celeste and Armand Bartos Visualization Center, located above the columns at MIT's main entrance at 77 Massachusetts Ave., is used frequently for special lectures and final reviews of studio projects. It is equipped with the latest in electronic presentation technology, including PictureTel room-size videocon-ferencing, computers for digital presentations and Internet connectivity, a digital video projector, two wall-size projection screens, dual slide projectors and a built-in sound system.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on November 17, 1999.
