American Philosophical Society
Member History

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Resident (3)
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502. Physicians, Theologians, Lawyers, Jurists, Architects, and Members of Other Professions[X]
1Name:  Ms. Denise Scott Brown
 Institution:  Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates
 Year Elected:  2006
 Class:  5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs
 Subdivision:  502. Physicians, Theologians, Lawyers, Jurists, Architects, and Members of Other Professions
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Living
 Birth Date:  1931
   
 
As an architect, planner, author and educator, Denise Scott Brown has helped to redirect the mainstream of modern architecture since the mid-1960s. No architect studying or in practice can have avoided her work or missed her call to broaden architecture to include ideas on pluralism and multiculturalism; social concern and activism; Pop Art, popular culture, and the everyday landscape; symbolism, iconography and context; the uses and misuses of history; electronic communication; the patterns of activities; the doctrine of functionalism; the relevance of mannerism; the role of generic building; and uncomfortably direct and uncomfortably indirect design--all these, in the making of architecture and urbanism today. Ms. Scott Brown feels she owes her views to a childhood and first architecture training at Witwatersrand University in South Africa in the 1940s and early 1950s, followed by London and the Architectural Association, 1952-55, and the University of Pennsylvania, 1958-1965. She received masters degrees in city planning and architecture from Penn and spent five years on the faculty while the social planning movement was being initiated there. She has also taught at the University of California, Berkeley, UCLA and Yale, Harvard and Princeton Universities and has lectured and advised world wide on architecture, urbanism and education. When she joined Robert Venturi in practice, she was well known for her contributions to theoretical research and education on the nature of cities. The early fruits of their collaboration were the research studies, "Learning from Las Vegas" and "Learning from Levittown." These projects and the book "Learning from Las Vegas (1972 by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour) challenged architects to study the human use and social context of architecture, the role of perception and memory in architecture, and the communicative possibilities of architecture. A primary focus had to do with symbolism and iconography. This turned the authors once again to history, to rediscover facets of architecture forgotten by the Modern Movement. Since 1967, as a leader of the firm now called Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, Denise has participated in a broad range of the firm's projects, including the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery in London, the Conseil Général complex in Toulouse, and the Mielparque Nikko Kirifuri hotel and spa near Nikko, Japan. As principal-in-charge for urban planning, urban design, and campus planning, her work has included urban planning for South Street, Philadelphia, Miami Beach, and Memphis, Tennessee; programming for the National Museum of the American Indian; and a plan for the Bouregreg Valley in Morocco. Today, Scott Brown focuses on urban university planning and design, where she employs tools evolved by melding the methods of planning and architecture. Her projects have included campus planning for Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, Williams College, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard and the University of Kentucky. She directed the University of Michigan campus master plan and plans for several of its sub-campuses. In this role, she evolved the design concepts for the Baker-Berry Library at Dartmouth, the Perelman Quadrangle precinct at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Life Sciences complex at the University of Michigan, and was able to exert guidance over these projects from campus planning, through design and construction, to successful use. Scott Brown has recently written on urban planning and design for the World Trade Center site, Philadelphia's Penn's Landing, and New Orleans and has a new book of collected essays out: Having Words. She has worked on a campus life plan and campus center for Brown University, a master plan update for Tsinghua University in Beijing, and a proposal for rehabilitating the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Among her awards are the Anne d'Harnoncourt Award for Artistic Excellence from the Arts & Business Council of Philadelphia (with Robert Venturi, 2010); the Vilcek Prize, awarded to a foreign-born American for outstanding achievement in the arts (architecture) and for contributions to society in the U.S., from the Vilcek Foundation (2007); the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum's National Design Mind Award (with Robert Venturi, 2007); the ACSA-AIA Topaz Medallion for distinguished teaching in architecture (1996); the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts' Benjamin Franklin Medal (1993); the National Medal of Arts (1992); the Republic of Italy's Commendatore of the Order of Merit (1987); the Chicago Architecture Award (1987); the AIA Gold Medal (with Robert Venturi, 2016); and the Jane Drew Prize (2017).
 
2Name:  The Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg
 Institution:  United States Supreme Court
 Year Elected:  2006
 Class:  5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs
 Subdivision:  502. Physicians, Theologians, Lawyers, Jurists, Architects, and Members of Other Professions
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Deceased
 Birth Date:  1933
 Death Date:  September 18, 2020
   
 
Ruth Bader Ginsburg's remarkable career in the law encompassed three distinct roles: law professor; Supreme Court advocate; and jurist. In 1963 - four years after graduating from Columbia Law School - Justice Ginsburg was appointed to the faculty of the Rutgers Law School. In 1972 her Columbia teachers persuaded her to return as a colleague. A year after joining the Columbia faculty, Justice Ginsburg took on the added duties of counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). From then until 1980 she was concurrently a scholar/teacher at Columbia and the architect-plus-field commander of the ACLU's campaign to establish gender equality under law. In furtherance of that campaign Justice Ginsburg won a series of major victories in the Supreme Court. In 1980 President Carter appointed her to the bench as a Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In 1993, President Clinton appointed her to the Supreme Court. In Justice Ginsburg's more than fifteen years of service on the highest court, her luminous opinions have brought sharper definition to the interconnections and inter-independencies of the three branches of the national government, and to the relations between the nation and the states, and have measurably strengthened the constitutional rights and freedoms of us all. Her recent awards include: the Radcliffe Medal (2015), the Genesis Prize (2017), the American Law Institute's Henry J. Friendly Medal (2018), University of Chicago's Harris Dean's Award (2019), the Berggruen Prize (2019), and the Liberty Medal of the National Constitution Center (2020). She died at her home in Washington DC at the age of 87 on September 18, 2020.
 
3Name:  Mr. Robert Venturi
 Institution:  Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, Inc.
 Year Elected:  2006
 Class:  5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs
 Subdivision:  502. Physicians, Theologians, Lawyers, Jurists, Architects, and Members of Other Professions
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Deceased
 Birth Date:  1925
 Death Date:  September 18, 2018
   
 
Robert Venturi, founding principal of Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates (VSBA), derived his reputation from both his architecture and theoretical and critical writings. In his most recent book, written with Denise Scott Brown, its publisher, Harvard University Press, refers to Mr. Venturi and Ms. Scott Brown's contributions as "(having) influenced architects worldwide for nearly half a century." Mr. Venturi's work includes a provincial capitol building of the Haute-Garonne in Toulouse, France; the Mielparque Nikko Kirifuri resort hotel near Nikko, Japan; the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery in London; additions to the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; the Seattle Art Museum; conceptual design of two high-rise offices in Shanghai; major expansions to Lehigh Valley Hospital; an extension to the Woodmere Art Museum; and a chapel for the Episcopal Academy near Philadelphia. VSBA has engaged in over 70 projects for over 30 institutions of higher learning, many involving repeat work, including labs for the University of Kentucky, Princeton, Penn, Michigan, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, and Yale; libraries at Dartmouth, Penn, Bard, and Harvard's Dumbarton Oaks; and campus centers for Princeton, Dartmouth, Penn, Delaware, Harvard, and Swarthmore. VSBA's architecture and planning are known for particular responsiveness to the client's program, schedule, and budget and to the building's context, accommodating a distinctive aesthetic for each project. Mr. Venturi's teaching, lecturing, and writing received widespread attention and critical review. "Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture" (Museum of Modern Art Press, 1966) has been translated and published in 18 languages, including a Samizdat edition in Czechoslovakian. It was honored with the AIA's Classic Book Award. Mr. Venturi's awards also included the Anne d'Harnoncourt Award for Artistic Excellence from the Arts & Business Council of Philadelphia (with Denise Scott Brown, 2010), the Pritzker Architecture Prize (1991) and the Presidential Medal of the Arts (1992). He, with Denise Scott Brown, was awarded the 2016 AIA Gold Medal. Robert Venturi died died September 18, 2018 in Philadelphia at the age of 93.
 
Election Year
2006[X]