Designer and Structural Engineer Cecil Balmond Appointed Penn Professor of Architecture

July 30, 2004

PHILADELPHIA Cecil Balmond, a distinguished designer and structural engineer, is joining the University of Pennsylvania School of Design as a professor of architecture.  

Balmond has collaborated with architects such as Toyo Ito, Alvaro Siza, Rem Koolhaas and Daniel Libeskind and artist Anish Kapoor.  Balmond was the structural engineer on the Koolhaas projects at the Villa Bordeaux in France, Kunsthal Rotterdam museum and Seattle Public Library.  He worked with Libeskind on London's Victoria and Albert Museum and Imperial War Museum.  

"Cecil Balmond is one of the most innovative and original designers of our time.   His interest lies in the genesis of form and the overlap of science with art," said Detlef Mertins, chair of Penn's Architecture Department.  "His experimental, constructive and algorithmic methods open a rich territory for design at different scales and in different media and regimes of matter, extending the horizons of both reason and beauty."

Balmond has a five-year appointment as the Paul Philippe Cret Professor of Architecture.   He'll teach a geometry course and an advanced design studio.  

Paul Philippe Cret, for whom the chair is named, taught architecture at Penn in the early 20th century.  His works include the Pan American Union Building and the Federal Reserve Board Building in Washington, D.C., the Valley Forge Memorial Arch and the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia