Episode 47_Tony Costello Building Ideas

Tony Costello has been an educator / practitioner for his entire 54+ year career as an architect. He holds the title, Irving Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Architecture at Ball State University, retiring as a full-time faculty member in 2005 after 38 years. He has continued for the last 16 years in an adjunct capacity and teaches one elective course a year and is involved in the Department of Architecture Professional Advisory Board.

He is also the founding principal of C+A, COSTELLO + ASSOCIATES, a limited-practice, award-winning, firm he founded in 1976 in Muncie, Indiana. The focus of his practice since 2010 has been on pro bono projects in Haiti that include a completed library and an orphanage campus consisting of 5 buildings to date.

Tony is a native New Yorker (Life-long METS fan) having been born in Corona, Queens, until 9 years of age when his family moved north of Peekskill, New York, on the Hudson River which he considers his “hometown.” He attended Pratt Institute from 1961 to 1964 when he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to Turkey. As a Fulbright Scholar he attended the Middle East Teknik University (METU), Ankara, for the ’64-’65 academic year and was awarded a B. ARCH degree in 1965, thus being one of the first three Americans to earn this honor. He returned to Pratt and graduated in 1966 with a B. ARCH degree with Honors and was awarded the school’s Dean’s Medal.

He attended Columbia University and received an M.S. Degree in Urban Design in June 1967, and was awarded a William Kinne Fellows Traveling Fellowship for the summer of 1967. After teaching for ten years, he was awarded a Lilly Endowment Open Faculty Fellowship and did a year of post-graduate work in Planning Law and Public Policy at Harvard and MIT.

Tony has built an international-recognized career as one of the “pioneers” of the community-based, urban design movement founded in the late 1960’s. His founding of the Urban Design Studio at Ball State (1969) which became the Community-Based Projects (CBP) Program (1979) as well as the Muncie Urban Design Studio and Small Town Assistance Program (both in 1980). Largely due to his pioneering efforts, Ball State’s Community Based Projects (CBP) Program was honored in 2000 with the ACSA-Fannie Mae Community Design Award as one of the three, oldest, continuous community design programs in North America. Combined, these programs have won over 40 national and state awards from the AIA, APA, ACSA and U.S. Dept. of HUD in urban planning design, neighborhood revitalization, historic preservation, and affordable housing.

Tony has been a corporate member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) since 1971. He served a three-year term (2005-2008) on a board of directors of the national AIA as a regional representative from the AIA Ohio Valley (IN, KY and OH) and served on the institute’s Community Committee. He also served as the national chairman of the AIA 150 - Blueprint for America subgroup, which was one of three components of the institute’s sesquicentennial celebration. For his leadership of this program, he was awarded a Presidential Citation in 2006. He was the major author of the AIA Guidelines on Pro Bono Services (2009); Tony was inducted into the AIA’s prestigious College of Fellows in 2001 and was named an AIA Richard Upjohn Fellow in 2008. He currently serves (2021-2023) as the Ohio Valley Regional Representative of the College of Fellows.