Mar 22nd 2017

Dean’s Lecture Series: Tod Williams and Billie Tsien

Tod Williams and Billie Tsien of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners will deliver a lecture on Wed., March 29 at 6 p.m. in S. R. Crown Hall.

Tod Williams and Billie Tsien are partners-in-charge and lead designers at Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners in New York City.

Tod Williams and Billie Tsien began working together in 1977 and founded their architectural practice in 1986. Their studio focuses on work for institutions, including schools, museums, and not-for-profits. A sense of rootedness, light, texture, detail, and most of all, experience, are at the heart of what they design.

Over the past three decades, Williams and Tsien have received more than two dozen AIA Awards as well as many other national and international citations. Most recently, a 2017 AIA Institute Honor Award for Architecture for their Logan Center for the Arts, located at the University of Chicago. In 2013, they received the National Medal of the Arts from President Obama and Firm of the Year Award from the American Institute of Architects. In 2014, the received an International Fellowship from the Royal Institute of British Architects. Other completed projects include the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, David Rubinstein Atrium at Lincoln Center in New York, and Asia Society Center in Hong Kong. Last year, they were selected to design the Obama Presidential Center.

Williams was born in Detroit, MI and received his MFA and Master of Architecture from Princeton University, and is a trustee of the American Academy in Rome. Tsien was born in Ithaca, NY and received her undergraduate degree in Fine Arts from Yale University and Master of Architecture degree from UCLA. She is the current President of The Architectural League of New York. Outside the studio, they are active participants in a broad cultural community and maintain long-standing associations with many organizations devoted to the arts. At various times, they have taught at the Cooper Union, Harvard University, Cornell University, Yale University, and the University of Michigan. As both educators and practitioners, they are dedicated to creating a better world through architecture.

This lecture is presented in partnership with the Architecture & Design Society at the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Mies van der Rohe Society at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

IIT Architecture Dean's Lecture Series are academic forums in which architects, landscape architects, and academics discuss theory and practice with students and our community. Questions from the audience will be limited to those from our students and community.