New York-based architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien have been named as the winners of the inaugural Kanter Tritsch Medal for Excellence in Architecture and Environmental Design by the University of Pennsylvania School of Design.

The architects, behind the Obama Presidential Center project in Chicago, have been awarded for the inaugural Kanter Tritsch Medal for Excellence in Architecture and Environmental Design. 

PennDesign Dean and Paley Professor Frederick Steiner praised the architects' buildings "as elevated beauty and efficiency in their highest form."

Obama Presidential Center by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects. Image courtesy of Obama Foundation

"The design of the built environment is absolutely central to our urban and ecological challenges," said PennDesign Dean and Paley Professor Frederick Steiner, who helped establish the Sustainable SITES Initiative, the first program of its kind to offer a comprehensive rating system for sustainable land development and management. "We want to elevate beauty and efficiency in their highest form."

"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."

"Making the world a better place is personal for Tod and Billie. You can see it in their work," said designer and alumna Lori Kanter Tritsch (MArch’85), who initiated the Medal and Prize with a $1.25 million gift to PennDesign on behalf of herself and her partner William Lauder (W’83), a Wharton alumnus and Penn Trustee.

LeFrak Center at Lakeside by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects. Image © Michael Moran/OTTO

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.

The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects. Image © Michael Moran/OTTO

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.

Asia Society Hong Kong Center by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects. Image © Michael Moran/OTTO

Along with Lori Kanter Tritsch, the jury for the professional medalist was comprised of Dean Steiner; Winka Dubbeldam, Miller Professor and Chair in the Department of Architecture, PennDesign; alumnus A. Eugene Kohn (AR’53, GAR’57), co-founder and chairman, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, and a member of PennDesign’s Board of Overseers; and Marion Weiss, Graham Chair Professor of Architecture, PennDesign, and co-founder, WEISS/MANFREDI.

The PennDesign states that 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.

Top image: Tod Williams and Billie Tsien. Image © Jason Smith

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