Board of Directors

SPOTLIGHT...

Barbara Sweeney, AIA, grew up in Howard Park, a neighborhood in north Baltimore, and graduated from city and county public schools. At the University of Maryland, she tried English and horticulture as majors before settling into architecture after being influenced by a friend who was an architecture major. She transferred to the University of Virginia where she earned a B.S. in Architecture in 1980. Barbara returned to Baltimore to work at RTKL for two years, and then studied at the University of Maryland full-time, earning her M.Arch. in 1985. She worked at the former Ziger Hoopes & Snead for five years before she took time to help her ailing mother and rear her children. She and her husband, Peter Doo AIA, renovated what had been a Pratt Library branch to become their home. The building, one of the four original, identical branches in the city, was published in a book on adaptive reuse and also used in the filming of the movie, He Said, She Said.

When Barbara returned to practicing architecture, she worked for four years at Hord Coplan Macht before joining Steve Burdette as he began his own firm. Initially, Barbara spent her time working on a large hospital complex in Russia which had been begun before the dissolution of the Soviet Union and then was held in limbo for years.

In 1999, Barbara rejoined Ziger/Snead LLP where she has been working on high-end residential projects. She says she enjoys working on homes because the clients are typically the end-users, and they always have a great deal of vested interest. “One of the greatest pleasures I get from residential work is being able to be involved in such a personal and important aspect of people’s lives, and to be able to help them achieve, not simply the ‘machine for living,’ but a place of beauty and inspiration.”

Barbara has been active in the AIA since the early 1980s when she worked at RTKL. She and Peter had helped select books for the chapter’s first bookstore at its office in the Candler Building. While at Hord Coplan Macht, she became active on the continuing education committee which she eventually co-chaired with Jim Wallace, AIA in 2000-01. Barbara initiated a very popular tour and program we had for several years at Bethlehem Steel. She was elected to the board of directors in 2002.

Barbara has served as a board member in the north Baltimore community of Armagh Village, where she and her family now live.