Each year, we mourn the loss of beloved members of the GSD community and vow to keep their memories alive. This year, we’ve decided to honor those who are no longer with us in this Giving Report. The toll of COVID-19 has reached all corners of the world, including the GSD, as we grieved the passing of a much higher number of alumni than in years past. Each number represented a beloved member of our community: a designer, a leader, a parent, a child, a sibling, a friend.

We celebrate their lives as we remember and honor those we have lost. With us, we carry the memory of the alumni, faculty, and friends of the school who died in 2019 and 2020. Every one of them made an imprint on the world of design and on our hearts. For that, we are eternally grateful.

Mr. Richard T. Murphy Jr., FASLA MLA ’80
Mr. Philip G. Freelon LF ’90
Professor Emeritus Ellery Culver Green MArch ’71
Mr. James John O’Hara MArch ’73
Mr. Morgan Dix Wheelock, Jr. AB ’60, MLA ’64
Mr. J. Michael Everett MLA ’68
Professor Emeritus Robert Leo Williams MArch ’55
Mr. Felix M. Warburg II AB ’46, MArch ’51
Mr. John L. Wilson AB ’62, MArch ’66
Mr. Nathan C. Hoyt MArch ’79
Mr. Robert Pepper Perron MLA ’61
Ms. Kathleen M. Hanlon MLU ’81
Mr. Christopher J. Allegra GSD ’84
Prof. Elaine Baunhuber Fisher MDS ’89
Ms. Elizabeth Reilly Moynahan AB ’46, MArch ’52
Mr. Michael H. Farny GSD ’57, MBA ’66
Mr. Robert Gregor Currie MArch ’65
Dr. Charles A. Jencks AB ’61, BArch ’65
Mr. Mark George Sumner MCP ’74
Mr. Hong Suk Yang MDes ’19
Mr. Theodore D. Kohner AB ’63, GSD ’64
Mr. Leon A. Setti AB ’57, GSD ’62
Mr. Gilbert A. Fishman AB ’67, MArch ’71
Mr. John Archibald Dunning GSD ’61
Mr. Wayne Marsh Womack MLA ’61
Mr. M. W. Bibbins MArch ’60
Mr. Douglas Michel Amedeo GSD ’68
Mr. William S. Harris Jr. MArch ’83
Koichi Mera, PhD PHD ’65
Ms. Erica L. Tishman MArch ’85
Mr. Stephen E. Finan MCP ’74
Mr. Andrew A. Glickson AB ’70, GSD ’73
Mr. John H. Hendrich MDes ’89
Mr. Donald Campbell Richardson MLA ’61
Ms. Lisa M. Cloutier MLA ’03, MUP ’03
Mr. Evan H. Shu MArch ’78
John Lund Kriken, FAIA MAUD ’68
Ms. Sylvia F. Chaplain MCRP ’77
Mr. John S. Wallour AB ’50, MArch ’54
Mr. Hugh Asher Stubbins III MArch ’68
Mr. David J. Tirrell AB ’49, MArch ’54
Professor Francois C. D. Vigier MCP ’60, PHD ’67
Mr. Michael A. Levett LF ’71
Mr. Henry N. Cobb AB ’47, MArch ’49
Mr. E. Lynn Miller MLA ’59
Mr. Roger Clement Vogler GSD ’50
Mr. David Russell Cooper MCP ’60
Mr. Michael David Sorkin GSD ’72, GSA ’76
Mr. Gregory Farrell LF ’71
Mr. Brian G. McGrath MCRP ’82, KSG EE ’99
Mr. John C. Haro MArch ’55
Rifat K. Chadirji LF ’83
Mr. Harold Louis Goyette MArch ’54, GSD ’57
Mr. Gordon T. Milde AB ’62, MCP ’66
Paul W. Wu MLA ’75
Mr. Edwin Haley Paul MArch ’56
Dean Marvin J. Malecha MArch ’74
Dr. Alan Lewis Gans GSD ’50
Prof. Nancy Ai-Tseng Miao Twitchell MArch ’60
Mr. Michael M. Azarian MArch ’72
Mr. Barry Domenic Coletti GSD ’63
Mr. Robert G. Serafini AB ’70, MCRP ’77
Mr. Peter C. Bergh MLA ’64
Mr. James Francis Davies MCP ’65
Mrs. Jennifer E. Carroll MLA ’99
Mr. Heston Wing-Chiu Chau MArch ’75
Mr. George R. Mathey AB ’51, MArch ’55
Mr. Thomas C. Blandy AB ’54, MArch ’60
Mr. Roger Simon Gallet MArch ’71
Mr. Derrick L. Woody MAUD ’96
Mr. Craig H. Walton MRU ’79
Mr. David DeLong Coffin MArch ’65
Mr. Charles A. Platt AB ’54, MArch ’60
Mr. Bill N. Lacy LF ’74
Dr. Penelope Hedrick Schafer AB’66, PHD ’76
Mr. John Calvin Portman III MArch ’73
Mr. William P. Lamb AB ’60, MArch ’64
Mr. Harold J. Moffie AB ’50, GSD ’52, MAT ’59
Mr. Lewis W. Butler MArch ’84
Dr. Romin Koebel MAUD ’67
Mr. Jerry Irwin Miller MAUD ’63
Mr. Scott Fiorentino AMDP ’15
Mr. Lawrence W. Walquist Jr. MLA ’58
Ms. Rachelle L. Levitt MCP ’75
Mr. David Gilbert Rowland MArch ’55
Mr. William Henry Trogdon MArch ’52

 

In particular, we would like to reflect on the lives of Harry Cobb, Phil Freelon, and Jack Portman for their extraordinary commitments to the GSD.

Harry Cobb

HarryCob

Henry N. Cobb in 1968. Courtesy Pei Cobb Freed and Partners

Henry “Harry” N. Cobb passed away on March 3, just a month shy of his 94th birthday. Harry’s connection to the GSD dates back to 1947, when he began his MArch studies here. He served as chair of the Department of Architecture from 1980 to 1985; in his inaugural lecture as chair, he noted that he brought “to the school a mind burdened with a few biases and a great many questions, but no preconceived answers.” As GSD Dean Sarah M. Whiting said, “That quote captures him perfectly: actively engaged until his last days, Harry always had opinions, but his insatiable curiosity about architecture, pedagogy, the city, and design more broadly was never curtailed by preconceptions. A great tribute to Harry would be for all of us to carry this attitude forward.”

Harry was the last surviving namesake partner at Pei, Cobb, Freed & Partners, where he designed Montreal’s Place Ville Marie (1962), Portland’s Museum of Art (1983), and the John Hancock Tower (1971) in his birthplace of Boston. Harry also contributed other remarkable projects to his hometown, among them the John Joseph Moakley Courthouse & Harborpark (1998) and Harvard’s own Center for Government and International Studies (2005). He remained active to the end, with recent works like Boston’s commanding One Dalton (2019) and 30 Dalton (2016), New York’s 7 Bryant Park (2019), and Charleston’s International African American Museum (in progress). In 2017, he received the Harvard Medal, the highest honor presented to a member of the Harvard community and recognition of Harry’s commitment to the university–as an alumnus, teacher, administrator, and architect–over five decades. As the Architect’s Newspaper wrote, Harry “seemed to have never considered retirement as an option.”

Phil Freelon

Phil

Courtesy Perkins+Will | From left to right: Perkins+Will CEO Philip Harrison, FAIA, M.Arch. student Aria Griffin, AIAS, and Perkins+Will North Carolina–based design director Phil Freelon, FAIA.

Philip Freelon, one of the leading American architects of his generation, passed away in July 2019 after a long fight with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, the degenerative neurological condition also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. A native of Philadelphia and grandson of Impressionist painter Allan Randall Freelon Sr., Phil studied architecture as an undergraduate at North Carolina State University and as a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a 1990 Loeb Fellow, and in the same year founded his own firm, The Freelon Group, in Durham, N.C. Phil merged his firm with Perkins+Will in 2014, staying on to run the North Carolina office. In his honor, Perkins+Will launched The Philip Freelon Fellowship Fund at the GSD in 2016. The Fund provides financial aid to students attending the GSD with the intent to expand academic opportunities for African Americans and other under-represented architecture and design students. Aria Griffin MArch ’21 was the GSD’s first Philip Freelon Fellow.

Phil’s portfolio includes the Durham Bulls Athletic Park, the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture in Charlotte, N.C., the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, and the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture, which he designed in collaboration with David Adjaye, Hon. FAIA, and the late Max Bond.

He is survived by his wife Nnenna Freelon, a Grammy-nominated jazz singer, and three children.

Jack Portman

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John C. “Jack” Portman III (Courtesy Portman Architects)

John Calvin “Jack” Portman III, FAIA, a real estate developer and leader of the Atlanta–based firm Portman Architects, passed away at the age of 71 on Aug. 28. Jack had assumed leadership of Portman Architects in 2017 after his father’s death and spent his tenure further expanding the firm’s international presence. He earned his B.Arch. from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and his MArch from the GSD. In 1979, he joined John Portman & Associates as an apprentice architect, traveling to Shanghai, Beijing, and Hangzhou to explore development opportunities in China. This led to the Shanghai Centre design and development, a project that, at the time of its completion in 1990, contained the tallest building in Shanghai. In addition to his work in architecture, Jack also served on the board of the Harvard GSD Dean’s Leadership Council and of the Georgia Tech China Foundation, and as a member of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Chancellor’s Global Leadership Council.

Jack also worked to establish the John Portman Visiting Chair in Architecture, a visiting professorship at Harvard GSD in honor of his father. The Portman Chair creates a worthwhile complement to traditional faculty structures, offering a flexible appointment for a leading practitioner and programmatic support to ensure the chair holder’s maximum impact while in residence. In addition to providing for the role itself, the Portman Chair includes research assistance, the curation and organization of exhibitions, and production of related publications.

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