Miguel Ángel Rosales Izás, an architect who has specialized in the design of bridges, was born in Guatemala City (the capital of the eponymous Central American country) in 1961. He was oldest of the four sons of Antonio Rosales and Lidia Izás.
In 1984, Miguel A. Rosales earned a degree in architecture from Francisco Marroquín University in Guatemala City. He enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) the following year to study urban and environmental design. Rosales graduated from that educational institution in 1987 with a master of science in architecture studies.
Rosales went on to work for several years with Swiss civil engineer and bridge designer Christian Menn. The joint efforts included designing the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge, which spans the Charles River in Boston.
Rosales, who became a U.S. citizen, launched his own architecture and engineering firm in Boston in 1997. As president of Rosales + Partners and this firm’s principal designer, he has been extensively involved in designing and sometimes even rebuilding numerous bridges. These projects have included the following:
- The design of the Liberty Bridge at Falls Park on the Reedy, a pedestrian bridge in Greenville, South Carolina.
- The design of the Centennial Bridge, a cable-stayed bridge that crosses the Panama Canal and carries six lanes of the Pan-American Highway.
- The rebuilding of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, a bascule bridge spanning the Potomac River in the Washington, D.C., area This project included the installation of 18 sets of V-shaped concrete piers resembling seagulls in flight; and curved steel girders to help balance heavy traffic loads.
- The design of the Phyllis J. Tilley Memorial Bridge, a pedestrian bridge crossing the Trinity River in Fort Worth, Texas.
- The design of the Port Columbus Airport Crossover Taxiway at John Glenn Columbus International Airport in Columbus, Ohio.
- The rebuilding of the Longfellow Bridge, a steel rib arch bridge crossing the Charles River and linking Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood with the Kendall Square area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. A key feature of this project was the installation of an aesthetic lighting system.
Over the years, Rosales and his firm have received several major awards. These include the 2009 Gustav Lindenthal Medal for the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge; the ACEC (American Council of Engineering Companies) Award for the Phyllis J. Tilley Memorial Bridge; and the 2018 LIT Lighting Design Award (in the heritage lighting design category) for the Longfellow Bridge. Another notable recognition of Rosales’ accomplishments took place in 2025, when July 9 of that year was officially declared “Miguel Rosales Day” in honor of his contributions to that city’s infrastructure.
Photo Credit: Susan R. Symonds (Mainframe Photographics Inc. & Infinity Portrait Design) – licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
For more information on Miguel Rosales, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Rosales and https://rosalespartners.com/miguel-rosales/
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