Class of 2025: Brynn McClatchy named Outstanding Undergraduate Student for College of Architecture, Arts, and Design

Name: Brynn McClatchy

College: College of Architecture, Arts, and Design

Major: Architecture

Hometown: Charlotte, North Carolina

Plans after graduation: “I want to become a licensed architect. I’m moving to Richmond to be a designer at 3North.”

Favorite Hokie memory: “I studied abroad in Riva San Vitale, Switzerland, in fall 2023, during my third year. I went with the friends I had made back in my first year, the ones I have known and grown with. We had classes in the morning, studio in the afternoon, and long weekends to travel. That was definitely one of my favorite semesters.”

A model student

Model making and hand drawing come naturally for McClatchy, a fifth-year architecture student. To her, architecture seemed like the natural next step in the progression from Lego creations as a child to theatre set designs as a teenager.

“I knew I needed to work with my hands,” McClatchy said. “I have so much fun with hand drafting and model making.”

After her introductory experience to the field of design during Inside Design, a weeklong summer program for high school students considering a future in architecture and related design disciplines, McClatchy knew that Virginia Tech would be the right place to put her hands to work.

Since the beginning of her first year in the architecture program, McClatchy has dedicated her time and effort to bringing her ideas to life and encouraging others to do the same.

“Brynn has an innate ability to teach through example,” said Patrick Doan, associate professor in the School of Architecture. “What she learns — and experiences — will be given back.”

Outstanding in her field

McClatchy’s work ethic and enthusiasm for learning not only inspire students around her, but also distinguish her as a highly successful individual.

McClatchy was selected for the Emerging Leaders in Architecture 2024 Honors Academy of AIA Virginia, a year-long educational program designed to develop future architects and provide them with the skills and experience needed to accelerate their career growth and prepare them to be leaders in their firms and communities. Doan nominated McClatchy to be the Virginia Tech student representative and guided her through a successful application process.

During a year of seminars, work sessions, and project presentations with the team, McClatchy focused on affordable housing as the team drafted a master plan redesign of Potomac Yards in Alexandria. While striving for excellence on this project, she maintained her academic focus at Virginia Tech throughout the 2024 school year.

In summer 2024, McClatchy put her passion for architecture to work as an intern at 3North in Richmond. She applied skills that she developed in her studio classes and the Emerging Leaders in Architecture program, such as time management and self-motivation, to the professional environment of her internship.

When she returned to Blacksburg for the fall semester, McClatchy was excited to bring new ideas from her internship back to the classroom and beyond. “I learned a lot while watching design professionals break down their thinking so that clients, or other colleagues, could understand,” McClatchy said.

She also had the chance to see “articulated designers” in the professional setting, referring to those who are able to clearly communicate their thoughts and decisions to coworkers and clients, an area where she is also working on growing her own skills.

McClatchy’s favorite, yet most challenging, project so far is her current thesis project, the culmination of everything she has learned throughout both her in- and out-of-class experiences. McClatchy selected an open tract of land at Blacksburg's Heritage Park as her worksite, imagining a small, single room library and shed standing alone in the field.

“I’ve been calling it ‘A Series of Moves: An Exploration of the Detail.’ It’s about how detail exists across a range of scales,” McClatchy said. “When we think of architectural detail, we might think of a window or door. But I’m also thinking about the detail that exists across a range of scales. I’m thinking about the detail at the largest scale like buildings as details across the site to details at the smallest, or elemental, scale such as a door handle, bookshelf, or fireplace grate.”

Curating her own experience

Taking advantage of the opportunities, connections, and education offered by the School of Architecture, McClatchy has accumulated a vast portfolio of achievements, awards, and internship experiences.

“An architect is a curator of things,” McClatchy said as she echoed the substance of a Søren Pihlmann quote she heard in class. “I’m curating sites in my studio projects, knowledge from my internships, advice from my professors and classmates — even windows and walls and roofs from projects I have seen abroad — to present in my future designs.”

McClatchy was the recipient of several donor-funded scholarships and awards during her years as a Hokie. She received the Curtis R. Jennings, Jr. Perspective Award, Robert L. Turner Study Abroad Scholarship, and Lucy and Olivio Ferrari Study Abroad Award.

McClatchy’s overseas study experience came during a semester abroad in Riva San Vitale, Switzerland, at the Steger Center for International Scholarship, and is an example of the kinds of experiential learning opportunities that the university seeks to make available to all students through the Virginia Tech Advantage.

While overseas, McClatchy built on her foundation of knowledge through exposure to unfamiliar buildings, especially contemporary designs. During that time, she also began to seek out and learn from smaller architecture firms and their projects on Instagram. According to McClatchy, she collected many of these “friends,” which is what some of her professors call the architects that the students refer to for inspiration.

“She understands that school is more than satisfying a ‘checklist’ of course requirements, but rather a place to cultivate and build a body of knowledge that will form the foundation of her future work,” Doan said.

Home sweet desk

Whether creating models in Cowgill Hall or drafting sketches at the Steger Center, one thing remained the same for McClatchy: a personal desk as the perfect home base.

“Something that I love about being in the architecture program here is that I have my own desk,” McClatchy said. “In Riva, I had my own studio space, too.”

Every student in the School of Architecture is assigned a desk, which serves as a personal creative atmosphere.

During her first year at Virginia Tech, when students could only attend their classes via Zoom because of the pandemic, architecture students were among the few Hokies given the choice to log into Zoom classes from their  studio desks in Cowgill Hall. Ron Daniel, McClatchy’s first-year studio professor and professor emeritus of architecture, said McClatchy consistently chose to be present at her desk in Cowgill Hall, sandwiched between multicolored acrylic panels.

“I wanted to make friends during my first year and I wanted to be motivated by the people at their desks around me,” McClatchy said. “It is motivating and comforting to look up from your desk and see five other people here late at night or early in the morning.”

When McClatchy graduates in May, her life will change dramatically as she joins a firm and takes the next big step toward making a name for herself in the field of architecture. But she can still rely on one constant. She may look up and see different people at work, but she’ll still be doing so from her own desk.

Written by Ashley Falat, a junior communications major