Lectures
Gordon H. Smith Lecture
Ann Beha
Straight Up, with a Twist: Clarity, Intention, Delivery
Founder and Design Principal of Ann Beha Architects, Ann’s practice is best known for championing preservation and adaptive use in dialogue with contemporary design. Ann’s work emphasizes invitation, and engagement, and welcomes a broadened community to reconsider historic resources, new design, and the roles, and inspiration, of civic and community settings. Ann is senior collaborating architect with annum architects, ABA’s successor firm.
Ann’s work for museums, academic institutions, cultural resources, and abroad, for the US Department of State, have reset expectations for existing buildings. She has led and delivered planning and design projects at MIT, Harvard, the Embassies of the United States in Paris, and Athens, and national and community civic, arts, and educational institutions. At Yale, ABA, now annum, completed the renovation and expansion of 320 York Street, now the Humanities Quadrangle, receiving Honor Awards from the Society of College and University Planning, and an Award of Excellence from AIA Connecticut.
Ann has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the New England Chapter of the Victorian Society in America, the Boston Society of Architects Honor Award and the Women in Design Award of Excellence, and the inaugural Award of Honor from the US Department of State, Overseas Building Operations.
Ann’s Master of Architecture degree is from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She holds a BA from Wellesley College, was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, serves on Harvard’s Campus Design Advisory Council, has taught at City College of New York and in 2023 will be Visiting Professor of Design at Yale University.
The Gordon H. Smith Lectureship in Practical Architecture was established in 1980 by Gordon H. Smith (B.E. 1957).