Architecture School Names Four Distinguished Visiting Professors

Robert A.M. Stern, dean of the Yale School of Architecture, has announced that four distinguished architects will hold visiting endowed professorships during the Fall Semester 2001.

Brigitte Shim will be the William Henry Bishop Visiting Professor of Architecture and the Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies. Demetri Porphyrios will be the William B. and Charlotte Shepherd Davenport Visiting Professor of Architecture. Peter Eisenman will be the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professor and Henry Smith-Miller will be the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor.

“The Yale School of Architecture has a long and proud tradition of bringing the best and brightest architects from around the world to campus, where they work closely with our students,” said Stern.”Supported by three long-standing endowments and one recently established fund, these visiting professorships allow us to expose students to an extraordinary range of ideas and experiences in architectural theory and practice.”

The Bishop Visiting Professorship was established through the bequest of William Henry Bishop (B.A. 1876) for the appointment of a distinguished visiting architect to the faculty. Since 1973, when the first appointment was made, outstanding practitioners and theorists have held this chair, including Peggy Deamer, Mario Gandelsonas, Charles Gwathmey, Steven Izenour and Glenn Murcutt.

Brigitte Shim is a principal of Shim-Sutcliffe Architects in Toronto, a design firm that integrates furniture, architecture and landscape. Their built architectural work, including Ledbury Park and Craven Road House, both in Toronto, has been honored with five Governor General’s Medals and Awards for Architecture, along with honors from the AIA, American Wood Council, and I.D. Magazine. Furniture designed by the firm has won awards and represented Canadian design in international exhibitions. Their designs have been published widely in the U.S., Europe and Japan. Shim is a member of the faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto.

The Davenport Visiting Professorship was established through the generosity of Professor Shepherd Stevens (B.F.A 1922), in honor of his uncle and aunt, William B. (B.A. 1867) and Charlotte Shepherd Davenport. Since 1966, the Davenport chair has allowed Yale to invite a distinguished architect to join the faculty each semester. Previous Davenport Professors have included James Stirling, Tadao Ando, Frank O. Gehry, Bernard Tschumi and Greg Lynn.

The next Davenport Visiting Professor will be Dimitri Porphyrios, a classicist architect and theorist. Educated at Princeton, where he earned both a master’s degree of architecture and a Ph.D. in the history and theory of architecture, the Greek-born, London-based Porphyrios has taught at the Architectural Association and the Royal College of Art in London, as well as at the University of Virginia. His publications include “On the Methodology of Architectural History,” “Building and Architecture” and “Classicism is Not a Style.” Among his design projects are the town of Pitiousa in Spetses, Greece, and the Magdalen College Grove Quadrangle at Oxford University. Porphyrios previously held the Davenport Professorship in 1989 and 1991 and was the Bishop Professor in 1999.

The Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professorship was established through the generosity of faculty, alumni and friends of Yale. Kahn, a great architect and teacher, made a lasting impression on the history of architecture with buildings that were at once archaic and modern, monumental and spiritual. While he was a member of the Yale faculty, he designed his first building of consequence, the Yale University Art Gallery. His last building, the Yale Center for British Art, was created for Yale as well. Daniel Libeskind, was the inaugural Kahn Professor in the fall of 1999. In 2000, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien shared the Kahn Professorship.

Peter Eisenman will hold the Louis I. Kahn chair in the fall of 2001. In 1999, he assisted Philip Johnson in his recent tenure as the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor. Eisenman established his professional practice in 1980. His Wexner Center for the Visual Arts and Fine Arts Library at Ohio State University in Columbus and his Aronoff Center for Design and Art at the University of Cincinnati have met with international acclaim. Founding director of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York, Eisenman has received numerous prizes and grants and his projects have been exhibited at museums and galleries around the world. He is author of “House X” (1982), “Houses of Cards” (1987), “Eros and Other Errors” and “Moving Arrows” in 1980.

The Saarinen Visiting Professorship was established in 1984 through the generosity and effort of architect Kevin Roche and other former colleagues and clients of Eero Saarinen, who received his B.Arch. from Yale in 1934. When Saarinen died in 1961 at the age of 51, he was at the peak of his power and influence, with such acclaimed work as the GM Tech Center, the St. Louis arch and the U.S. Embassy in London. Saarinen was a major force behind Yale’s remarkable building program during the 1950s and 1960s. The professorship endowed in his honor has enabled Yale to invite many distinguished architects to teach design studios. Previous holders of the chair include Philip Johnson and Kazuo Shinohara. In Spring 2001, Andres Duany and Leon Krier were the Saarinen Professors.

Henry Smith-Miller will be the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor during Fall Semester 2001, a position he previously held in 1990. He is a principal of Smith-Miller & Hawkinson Architects, based in New York City, which has recently won wide acclaim for its Museum of Glass at the Corning Glass Works, Corning New York. In 2001, the partnership was awarded the Arnold W. Bruner Memorial Prize in Architecture of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for excellence in Architecture as Art.