The University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s School of Architecture is to be renamed the David R. Ravin School of Architecture following a donation from the school’s alumnus David Ravin. The donation, whose amount has not been disclosed, will be used to support students, pay for international studies, and finance university initiatives.

Ravin graduated from the school in 1994 with a BA in Architecture before attending the University of Michigan and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Today, he is the president and CEO of Northwood Ravin, a development, construction, and property management firm.

"There is no right answer in architecture,” Ravin remarked at a ceremony for renaming the school on November 18th. “Every time we would come on a project and present, you were basically trying to convince that group that what you came up with was the right answer. And so over many, many years of doing that, you got a thick skin because sometimes they would disagree with you. It started to teach you a really good skill set that I think the students here probably don't even recognize they all end up with.”

News of the donation comes weeks after a UNC Charlotte architecture professor was awarded a $1 million grant towards the incorporation of algae into windows. In July, meanwhile, our Studio Snapshot series spoke with Sekou Cooke, who in 2021 was named as director of the UNC Charlotte School of Architecture’s Master of Urban Design program.

The school was also among seventeen who saw enrolled students receive more than $70,000 in scholarships from Gensler in July, while at the beginning of 2022, the school’s faculty members were among the winners of the ACSA Architectural Education Awards.