The Cunningham Lecture: John Tuomey | A Celebration of David Leatherbarrow

Celebration of David Leatherbarrow
5:00pm

In 2020, David Leatherbarrow was awarded the Topaz Medallion, the highest award given by the AIA and ASCA for excellence in architectural education, and in 2021, he achieved the rank of professor emeritus. The program includes a series of tributes by architecture faculty followed by a lecture by his longtime friend John Tuomey and a reception.

Tributes to Dr. Leatherbarrow will be made by Dean Frederick Steiner, Architecture Chair Winka Dubbeldam, Dr. William Braham, Homa Farjadi, Annette Fierro, John Dixon Hunt, Franca Trubiano, John Tuomey, and Richard Wesley.

Leatherbarrow has taught theory and design at Penn since 1984, and before that at Cambridge University and the University of Westminster (formerly PCL) in England. He lectures throughout the world and has held honorary professorships in Denmark, Brazil, and China. In prior years, he was also the recipient of the Visiting Scholar Fellowship from the Canadian Center of Architecture (1997-1998) and two Fulbright Fellowships. His books include: Building time: architecture, event, and experience, 20th Century Architecture, Three Cultural Ecologies (with R. Wesley), Architecture Oriented Otherwise, Topographical Stories, Surface Architecture (with Mohsen Mostafavi), Uncommon Ground, Roots of Architectural Invention, and On Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time. His research focuses on history and theory of architecture, gardens, and the city.

The Cunningham Lecture: John Tuomey
6:30pm

This lecture will be held in-person and livestreamed on Weitzman YouTube.

The Department of Architecture welcomes John Tuomey, founding director at the Dublin-based firm O'Donnell+Tuomey, who will give the Cunningham Lecture.

John Tuomey was managing director of Group 91 Architects, an architects’ collaborative who designed the masterplan for the regeneration of Temple Bar as Dublin’s cultural quarter. He played a key role in liaising with government agencies, overseeing contract management and urban design integration of projects by Group 91.O’Donnell+ Tuomey designed two buildings within the quarter, completed in 1996.

He has had a leading involvement architectural education, teaching in the studios at UCD Architecture from 1980 – 2019. He was the inaugural Professor of Architectural Design at UCD from 2008-2019. He was chair of external examiners at the Architectural Association London for many years as well as at the Universities of Cambridge and East London. He has taught and lectured widely in European schools of architecture and at North American universities including Harvard, Princeton, Buffalo, Cooper Union, Columbia, Michigan, Syracuse, Toronto, Vancouver and Virginia. He was the first recipient of the UCD Masters in Architecture (based on reflective design practice).

He is an Honorary fellow of the American Institute of Architects. In 2010 he was elected a member of Aosdána, an affiliation of Irish Artists. In 2015 he was joint recipient with Sheila O’Donnell of the RIBA Royal Gold Medal and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Brunner Prize, both awarded in recognition of a lifetimes work.

In memory of Barney Cunningham, this lecture will honor his high standards and commitment to building construction, technology, professional practice and ethics.

If you require any accessibility accommodation, such as live captioning, audio description, or a sign language interpreter, please email news@design.upenn.edu to let us know what you need. Please note, we require at least 48 hours’ notice. If you register within 48 hours of this event, we won’t be able to secure the appropriate accommodations.