(1953–2019). Philip G. Freelon founded The Freelon Group in 1990. Over the past 21 years, the firm, based in Durham, NC, has grown to a total of 51 staff members, including 21 licensed architects. Focusing on higher education, science and technology, and museum/cultural center projects, Freelon’s firm has successfully delivered award-winning building design within a collaborative and innovative studio environment. The firm has completed major museum projects in Baltimore, San Francisco, and in Greensboro and Charlotte, NC. The team of Freelon Adjaye Bond was selected by the Smithsonian Institution to design the new National Museum of African American History and Culture, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., which opened in 2016. The Freelon Group joined Perkins & Will in 2014.
Freelon’s work has been published in national professional journals, including Architecture, Progressive Architecture, Architectural Record, and Contract magazine, where he was named Designer of the Year for 2008. Metropolis and Metropolitan Home magazines and the New York Times have also featured Freelon and his firm. The Freelon Group has received 37 AIA design awards at the national, regional, and state levels and also received AIA North Carolina’s Outstanding Firm Award in 2001.
Freelon has served as an adjunct professor at the College of Design, North Carolina State University, and has been a visiting critic and lecturer at Harvard University, MIT, the University of Maryland, Syracuse University, Kent State University, the University of Cincinnati, Catholic University, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology, among other institutions. In 1989, Freelon was awarded the Loeb Fellowship and spent a year of independent study at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is a member of the faculty of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning.
One of 29 LEED® Accredited Professionals in his firm, Freelon is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. He has served on numerous design award juries, including the National AIA Institute Honor Awards for Architecture. He is also the 2009 recipient of the AIA Thomas Jefferson Award for Public Architecture and the 2010 recipient of AIA North Carolina’s Gold Medal. President Barack Obama appointed him to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts in 2011, where he served from 2012 to 2016. In 2017, Fast Company named him Architect of the Year.
A native of Philadelphia, Freelon holds a Bachelor of Environmental Design (Architecture) from North Carolina State University’s College of Design (1975) and a Master of Architecture from MIT (1977).
Announcements
Between Memory and Invention: My Journey in Architecture by Robert A.M. Stern
Between Memory and Invention: My Journey in Architecture
By Robert A.M. Stern
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2022
Architect, historian, and educator Robert A. M. Stern presents a personal and candid assessment of contemporary architecture and his fifty years of practice.
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future
By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022
Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.
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Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People
By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022
Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.
Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counterculture New York by Steven Heller
Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counterculture New York
By Steven Heller
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Published: October 2022
An entertaining coming-of-age memoir from Steven Heller, award-winning designer, writer, and former senior art director at the New York Times, that takes readers on a visually inspired look back at being at the center of New York’s youth culture in the 1960s and ’70s.
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall
By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022
Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”
Buildings in Print: 100 Influential and Inspiring Illustrated Architecture Books by John Hill
Buildings in Print: 100 Influential and Inspiring Illustrated Architecture Books
By John Hill
Publisher: Prestel Publishing
Published: June 2021
This unique volume by the founder of the hugely influential architecture blog A Daily Dose of Architecture showcases the best illustrated architecture books ever published with an informed, personal, and engaging take on what makes the title unique and indispensable.
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