Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects

Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (also known as Tod Williams Billie Tsien and Associates) are a husband-and-wife architectural firm founded in 1974, based in New York.

Tod Williams

Tod Williams (born 1943, New York) studied architecture at Princeton University, New Jersey after graduating from the Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, Italy. Previous to founding the office Williams worked for six years for architect Richard Meier.

Williams is the father of Tod Williams and Rachel Williams.

Billie Tsien

Billie Tsien (born 1949, Ithaca, New York) received her undergraduate degree in Fine Arts from Yale in 1971 and her M. Arch. from UCLA in 1977. From 1971 to 1975, she was a painter and teacher. She has worked with Williams since 1977 and they have been in partnership since 1986. Tsien has taught at Parsons School of Design, SCI-ARC, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Yale University, University of Texas at Austin and the University of Virginia.

Tsien is the Director of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. She is on the boards of the Architectural League of New York, the Public Art Fund, and is a vice president of the Municipal Art Society in New York City. In addition, she has served on various panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Percent for Art jury for the Cities of New York and Seattle, and the Wexner Prize.

Teaching

Williams and Tsien shared the Jane and Bruce Graham Chair in Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in 1998, as well as the Eliel Saarinen Chair at the University of Michigan in 2001 and 2002.

Recognition

Williams and Tsien are the recipients of the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Medal of Honor from the New York City chapter of the American Institute of Architects, and the Chrysler Design Award (1998). They were the recipients of the AIA 2013 Architecture Firm Award as well as the National Medal of Arts in 2013.

A selection of works

• Hereford College, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA (1992)
• The Neurosciences Institute, Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA (1995)
• Long Island Residence, New York (1999)
• Cranbrook Natatorium, Cranbrook Schools, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (1999)
• American Folk Art Museum, New York, NY (2001)
• Skirkanich Hall, University of Pennsylvania (2006)
• Phoenix Art Museum expansion, Phoenix, Arizona (2006)
• East Asian Library, University of California, Berkeley (2007)
• Center for the Advancement of Public Action, Bennington College, Bennington, VT (2011)
• Asia Society Hong Kong Center, Admiralty, Hong Kong (2012)
• Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA (2012) - announced in September 2007 selected to design new location
• Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago (2012)
• LeFrak Center at Lakeside, Prospect Park, New York (2013)
• Tata Consultancy Services, Banyan Park, Mumbai, India (2014)
• Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (2015)

Sources

• Tod Williams, "Ascension", in Archipelago: Essays on Architecture, edited by P. MacKeith, Helsinki, Rakennustieto, 2006
• Billie Tsien, "The cuts through the heart", in Archipelago: Essays on Architecture.
• Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, The 1998 Charles and Ray Eames Lecture, Michigan Architecture Papers, University of Michigan Press, 1999.
• Douglas Heller, Tod Williams Billie Tsien and Associates: An Annotated Bibliography, Council of Planning Librarians, 1993.
• Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, Work/Life, New York, Monacelli Press, 2000.
• Kester Rattenbury, Robert Bevan, and Kieran Long, Architects Today, New York, Laurence King Publishing, 2006.

External links

• Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects Homepage