2015 Virginia Design Medalist – Tom Leslie
The Virginia Design Medalist at Hanbury, now in its 11th year, is awarded to a professor of architecture, planning or design-related curriculum, who spends several weeks with the firm. The professor participates in design discussions, critiques work and delivers lectures, formal and informal. One lecture is open to members of the regional AIA. It is an opportunity for the firm to have an academic assessment of its work. It is also an opportunity for the professor to step back into the real design world.
This year's 2015 Virginia Design Medalist, Tom Leslie, AIA, will be with the firm from July 28 - August 7. Leslie's time with Hanbury will round out the journey the firm has taken in the past two years through Branding and Operations and back home to Design. He will help grow the strategic plan focus areas of design, growth and leadership by providing historical and personal expertise.
Leslie's research focus is on periods in history marked by upheaval and change and on the innovators who understood the issues and provided solutions. He will lead the firm through a series of parables from the past. The goal is to learn lessons from the past that apply today.
Thomas Leslie, AIA, is the Pickard Chilton Professor in Architecture and the Director of Graduate Education for the Department of Architecture at Iowa State University. He teaches building design, history and technology. Leslie has degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Columbia University. Prior to teaching, he spent seven years with Norman Foster and Partners, London.
Leslie is the author of Louis I. Kahn: Building Art, Building Science (Braziller, 2005) and Chicago Skyscrapers, 1871-1934 (University of Illinois, 2013). He is co-author of Design-Tech: Building Science for Architects (2d edition, Routledge, 2014).
Leslie's research into the historical relationship between engineering, design and construction has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Graham Foundation and the American Philosophical Society.
His research has appeared in publications including the Journal of Architectural Education, the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Construction History, Design Issues and Technology and Culture.
He has held visiting faculty positions at the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University, the University of Technology-Sydney, Australia, and the Bauhaus-Universitätin Weimar, Germany. His teaching has been recognized with awards from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, the U.S. Green Building Council and the American Institute of Architects.
In 2013-2014, Leslie was the Booth Family Fellow in Historic Preservation at the American Academy in Rome, where he researched the work of Italian engineer and builder Pier Luigi Nervi.
