Phil Freelon is a Visiting Lecturer teaching Professional Practice.
He is the founder and President of The Freelon Group, Architects located in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. Founded in 1990, The Freelon Group has grown to 60 total staff including 21 licensed architects. Focusing on college/university, transportation/aviation and museum/cultural center projects, Freelon’s firm has successfully delivered award winning building design within a collaborative and innovative studio environment. The firm has completed major museum projects in Baltimore, MD and San Francisco, CA and has recently been selected by the Smithsonian Institution to lead the planning team for the new National Museum of African American History and Culture to be located on the Mall in Washington, DC.
Freelon's work has been published in national professional journals including Architecture, Progressive Architecture, Architectural Record, and most recently in Contract magazine where he was named Designer of the Year for 2008. Metropolis and Metropolitan Home magazines and the New York Times have also featured Freelon and his firm. His furniture design has been recognized nationally including first prize in the PPG Furniture Design Competition and design contract work with Herman Miller. The Freelon Group has received twenty-six AIA design awards (regional, state and local) and has also received AIA North Carolina’s Outstanding Firm Award in 2001.
Freelon has served as an adjunct professor at the College of Design, North Carolina State University and has been a visiting critic/lecturer at Harvard, MIT, the University of Maryland, the University of Utah, the California College of the Arts and Kent State University (Florence Italy, program) among others. In 1989, Freelon was the recipient of the Loeb Fellowship and spent a year of independent study at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
He is currently serving as a Peer Professional in the GSA’s Design Excellence Program and has served on the National Endowment for the Arts Design Stewardship Panel and Mayors Institute on city Design. Freelon is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and was recently appointed to the Jury for the National AIA Institute Honor Awards for Architecture.