The Architectural League cordially invites its members and friends to its 140th Annual Meeting, which will take place on Wednesday, June 30, 2021, online. The official election of Officers and Directors and reports on recent and forthcoming League programs and projects will precede the Henry N. Cobb Annual Meeting Address. The 2021 address will be delivered by Renée Cheng, Dean of the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington. 

Schedule

6 p.m.
Remarks and Election of Officers and Directors, Paul Lewis, President, The Architectural League, and Rosalie Genevro, Executive Director, The Architectural League

6:20 p.m.
Henry N. Cobb Annual Meeting Address, “Change Agency, Value Change,” by Renée Cheng, Dean of the College of Built Environments, University of Washington

About the Annual Election of Officers and Directors

Members of the League play an important role in its governance. Members elect the organization’s Officers and Directors, who oversee the League’s operations and its professional staff.

All current members are eligible to vote and will receive an email with a direct link to cast their ballot online. Learn more about this year’s election and the nominees here.

About Renée Cheng

Renée Cheng joined the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington as dean on January 1, 2019. Previously, she had served at the University of Minnesota as professor, associate dean of research, head of the school of architecture, and director of an innovative graduate program linking research with practice and licensure. 

Dean Cheng has been honored twice as one of the top 25 most admired design educators in the United States by DesignIntelligence. She has received numerous honors and awards, including the 2017 Lean Construction Institute Faculty Award; she was named to the American Institute of Architecture’s College of Fellows in 2017. Dean Cheng led the research effort for the AIA guides for equitable practice in the workplace, and has pioneered research surrounding the intersection of design and emerging technologies. A licensed architect, her professional experience includes work for Pei Cobb Freed & Partners and Richard Meier & Partners before founding Cheng-Olson Design.

About the Henry N. Cobb Annual Meeting Address

The Annual Meeting Address is a commissioned lecture by a leading figure in architectural practice, education, or theory who brings a distinctive point of view to the question of what can—and should—animate architectural discourse and production now. The 2020 address was delivered by Sarah Whiting, Dean of the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, in 2020; the inaugural address was delivered in 2019 by Milton S. F. Curry, Della & Harry MacDonald Dean of the University of Southern California School of Architecture. In 2020, the Architectural League renamed the Annual Meeting Address in honor of the distinguished architect and educator, and longtime friend of the League, Henry Nichols Cobb. Harry’s death in the late winter of 2020 was a major loss to the world of architecture.

Harry Cobb was a leader of the firm now known as Pei Cobb Freed & Partners for more than 50 years. Throughout his career in practice he also taught, including serving as studio professor and chair of the Department of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design from 1980 to 1985. The Architectural League awarded its President’s Medal to Harry in 2015 for “the truly consequential work he has created as designer, educator, thinker, writer, and leader.” As we wrote in the President’s Medal citation, “we are inspired by his decades-long passion for the art of architecture; by his analytic rigor, manifest in subtle and articulate buildings and penetrating readings of history and place; by the broad and profoundly informed humanist culture that suffuses his writings and approach to education; and by the unbounded curiosity and delight he takes in new ideas, new work, and new talent.” The Henry N. Cobb Annual Meeting Address is inspired by all that Harry Cobb brought to architecture, and by a desire to constantly reconsider and renew the commitments and aspirations of the discipline.