By Terry Gallagher
News and Information Services
James Ingo Freed, the architect who designed the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum now under construction in Washington, D.C., will deliver the annual Raoul Wallenberg Lecture sponsored by the College of Architecture and Urban Planning at 8 p.m. Thurs. (Feb. 18) in Rackham Amphitheater.
The free, public lecture honors Raoul Wallenberg, a 1935 architecture graduate who rescued thousands of Jews from Nazi persecution while serving as a Swedish diplomat in Budapest during World War II. Wallenberg was arrested by the Soviet army when they liberated Hungary and his fate is unknown.
Freed, partner in the architectural firm Pei Cobb Freed & Partners in New York City, is the principal designer for a number of other major projects now in planning or under construction, including the United States International Cultural and Trade Center in Washington, D.C., the San Francisco Main Public Library and the Los Angeles Convention Center.
He also designed the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City, completed in 1986, and numerous office, retail and mixed-use projects across the country.
Freed has been associated with the firm established by I.M. Pei since 1956. Previously, he worked with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. He has taught architecture and design at Yale, Columbia and Cornell universities and he was dean of the College of Architecture/Planning and Design at Illinois Institute of Technology in 1975–78.
