Architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien to Present Lecture on April 13

Photo of Michael Moran

The interior courtyard at the Center for the Advancement of Public Action at Bennington College, in Bennington, Vermont, designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Tod Williams and Billie Tsien will present a lecture at 5 p.m. Monday, April 13, at Ken and Linda Sue Shollmier Hall, Room 250 of Vol Walker Hall, on the University of Arkansas campus, as part of the Fay Jones School of Architecture lecture series.

Williams was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1943. He received his undergraduate degree and Master of Fine Arts and Architecture from Princeton University. Tsien was born in Ithaca, New York, in 1949. She received her undergraduate degree in Fine Arts from Yale and her Master in Architecture from UCLA.

They founded Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects in 1986. Their studio, located in New York City, focuses on work for institutions such as museums, schools and non-profits - organizations that value issues of aspiration and meaning, timelessness and beauty. Their buildings are carefully made and useful in ways that speak to both efficiency and the spirit. A sense of rootedness, light, texture, detail and, most of all, experience are at the heart of what they build.

Their compelling body of work includes Hereford College at the University of Virginia, the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California, the Cranbrook Natatorium in Michigan, the American Folk Art Museum in New York, Skirkanich Hall Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, two additions to the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona, the CV Starr East Asian Library at the University of California at Berkeley, the David Rubenstein Atrium at New York's Lincoln Center, and the Center for the Advancement of Public Action at Bennington College. Projects that include the Asia Society Center in Hong Kong, the First Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington, D.C., the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, the Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago, and a dormitory at Haverford College in Philadelphia were completed between 2011 and 2012. An information technology campus for Tata Consultancy Services in Mumbai, India, is under construction, in addition to two new skating rinks for Brooklyn's Prospect Park, and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University. The firm, with Davis Brody Bond, was recently awarded the commission to design the New Embassy Compound in Mexico City.

Along with recurrent recognition by the American Institute of Architects, the firm has garnered local, national, and international acclaim and press. Williams and Tsien are recipients of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Brunner Award, New York City AIA Medal of Honor, the Architectural League Presidents Medal, the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, the Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture, the Municipal Art Society Brendan Gill Prize, and the Chrysler Award for Design Innovation. In 1999, Williams was made a fellow of the American Institute of Architects. In 2007, both architects were elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Later that year, Tsien was inducted to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and Williams' induction followed in 2009.

Work by Williams and Tsien has been published extensively both in the United States and overseas. The Architecture of the Barnes Foundation, released in November 2012 by Skira Rizzoli, is the second book published on their work. Their first monograph, Work/Life: Tod Williams Billie Tsien, was published in 2000 by Monacelli Press.

Parallel to their practice, both Williams and Tsien maintain active teaching careers and lecture worldwide. Williams has taught for more than 30 years, 15 of which were at Cooper Union. Most recent appointments have been at The University of Michigan (Eliel Saarinen Chair, 2002), Yale (Louis I Kahn Chair, 2003 and 2005), The University of Virginia (Thomas Jefferson Chair, 2004), and the University of Florida in spring 2011. Tsien has taught at Parsons, Yale, Harvard Graduate School of Design, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Pennsylvania. Most recently, Tsien (with Williams) held the Bishop Visiting Professorship of Architectural Design at Yale University in the fall of 2010. They recently served as the Williams B. Charlotte Shepherd Davenport Visiting Professors for Architectural Design at Yale University. As educators and practitioners, Williams and Tsien are committed to making a better world through architecture; they practice architecture as an act of profound optimism.

Williams and Tsien are this year's John G. Williams Distinguished Visiting Professors in Architecture for the Fay Jones School of Architecture.

The public is invited to attend this lecture.

Admission is free, with limited seating. For more information, contact 479-575-4704 or architecture.uark.edu.