Peter Eisenman

Peter Eisenman (B.Arch. '55), an internationally recognized architect and educator, is founder and design principal of Eisenman Architects, an architecture and design office in New York City. The firm's current projects include the one-million-square-foot, six-building cultural complex, the City of Culture of Galicia in Santiago de Compostela, Spain; a master plan for a mixed-use development on the waterfront of Pozzuoli, Italy; and a residential condominium in Milan. Eisenman Architects' proposal for the Yenikapi Transit Hub and Archaeological Park in Istanbul won first prize in an international design competition in 2012 and is now open.

Award-winning projects by Eisenman Architects include the Wexner Center for the Arts and Fine Arts Library at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio; the Koizumi Sangyo Corporation headquarters building in Tokyo; and in Berlin, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and IBA Housing at Checkpoint Charlie, each of which received a National Honor Award for Design from the American Institute of Architects. The firm's Aronoff Center for Design and Art, the University of Phoenix Stadium for the National Football League's Arizona Cardinals, and City of Culture of Galicia have each been the subject of hour-long television documentaries on PBS and the Discovery Channel. The firm's work is also the subject of many books, including the monographs Tracing Eisenman (Thames & Hudson, 2006) and Peter Eisenman. Tutte le opere (Electa, 2007).

In 2020, Eisenman was honored with the Gold Medal in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters as well as the Kanter Tritsch Medal in Architecture from the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2015, he received the AIA/ACSA Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education in recognition of his distinguished contributions to teaching. In 2014, he received the Piranesi Prix de Rome for career achievement, awarded by the Accademia Adrianea di Architettura e Archeologia in Rome. In 2010, he received the international Wolf Prize in Architecture awarded by the Wolf Foundation in Jerusalem. Other honors include the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement awarded by the International Architecture Biennale in Venice in 2004, and in 2001, the Medal of Honor from the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, as well as the Smithsonian Institution's 2001 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture. Eisenman is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Popular Science magazine named him one of the top five innovators of 2006 for the multipurpose University of Phoenix Stadium.

Eisenman is also a distinguished author and teacher. Among his many books are Written Into the Void: Selected Writings, 1990–2004 (Yale University Press, 2007) and Ten Canonical Buildings, 1950–2000 (Rizzoli, 2008), which examines the work of ten architects since 1950. He has taught at many universities, including Cambridge, Princeton, Harvard, Ohio State, and The Cooper Union in New York City. In 2013 he received the AIA New York State Educator's Award for outstanding teaching. Currently he is the Charles Gwathmey Professor in Practice at the Yale University School of Architecture.

Eisenman holds a B.Arch. from Cornell University, a M.S. in architecture from Columbia University, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Cambridge University. He holds an honorary doctorate of fine arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago, Pratt Institute, Syracuse University, and the Brera Academy of Art in Milan; and an honorary doctorate in architecture from the Università La Sapienza in Rome.

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