Biographical Note

Melita Rodeck was born on April 12, 1914, in Milan, Italy, to Austrian parents. After the outbreak of World War I her family returned to Vienna where she was educated. She enrolled at the Vienna Polytechnic in 1932 to study architecture, and immigrated to the United States in 1939. Upon arriving in the United States she spent four years volunteering in the Harlem slums. In 1950 she moved to Washington, D.C., and worked for the General Services Administration of the U.S. federal government. She became a registered architect of the District of Columbia in 1952 and established her own office in 1958, where she designed residences in Maryland and Virginia and restored townhouses in Washington, D.C.

From 1968 to 1973 Rodeck worked as an architect for special research projects at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, then from 1973 to 1980 as a coordinator for architectural research for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. She was a program manager of Radiological Emergency Preparedness Programs for the Federal Emergency Management Agency from 1980 to 1985 and designed guidelines to minimize or eliminate flood damage to buildings. She retired from federal government work in 1985.

Rodeck was a devout Catholic and in the 1960s established the Regina Institute of Sacred Art, an organization dedicated to aiding Catholic parishes in their design and decoration efforts. The institute aimed to educate parishioners about the emotional impact of and psychological need for good design.

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