The University of Pennsylvania School of Design (PennDesign) has named Tod Williams and Billie Tsien as recipients of the inaugural Kanter Tritsch Medal in Energy and Architectural Innovation. The Medal will be presented at a benefit in New York City on October 15, 2018, along with the $50,000 Kanter Tritsch Prize for an exceptional second-year graduate architecture student, which has been awarded to Alexandra Mae Adamski.
"Tod and Billie have been incredible role models," said Winka Dubbeldam, Miller Professor and Chair in the Department of Architecture. "But more than that, they've been committed to teaching the next generation of architects."
Williams and Tsien's built projects include the American Folk Art Museum (2001), New York; the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center (2009), New York, and the LeFrak Center at Lakeside (2013), Brooklyn, both of which earned LEED Gold status. In Philadelphia, they designed the Barnes Foundation (2012), the first major art and education institution in the country to achieve the highest level of environmental certification from the U.S. Green Building Council; and Skirkanich Hall (2006), which houses the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Penn. Their firm is currently designing the Obama Presidential Center.
Tod Williams and Billie Tsien began working together in 1977 and founded their architectural practice in 1986 in New York City. Over the past three decades, they have crafted a body of work varied in scale, type, program and location. With a range of civic, institutional, educational, and private clients in the United States and abroad, the firm is best known for its institutional projects-in particular, museums, schools and non-profit organizations. In parallel with their practice, Williams and Tsien have lectured widely and taught at the Cooper Union, Harvard, Cornell, and Yale; they were visiting professors in the Department of Architecture at Penn in 1986.