Lee Copeland FAIA

AIA Seattle Medal 2000
Lee Copeland FAIA (BArch cum laude University of Washington 1960; MArch & MCP, University of Pennsylvania 1963).  Dean, UW College of Architecture and Urban Planning 1972-1979; Dean and Paley Professor of Architecture and Planning, Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania 1979-1991.
He worked in Seattle with Joyce Copeland Vaughan & Nordfors, with Weinstein Copeland, and as Consulting Principal, Mithun.  He received the AIA Seattle Medal in 2000, and in 2001 the AIA/ACSA Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education.  In 2017, the University of Washington Department of Architecture presented Lee Copeland with its inaugural Distinguished Alumnus Award.

In a career of unusual breadth and accomplishment, Lee Copeland has achieved a rare balance of mutually reinforcing roles in education and practice.  Lee's work combining these roles has had a profound influence on the emerging discipline of urban design, on urban designers now practicing around the world, and on the form of American places of living and learning.

His extensive, thoughtful, and powerful work in education and practice has made a distinct contribution to the development of American urban design, in three major areas as summarized below:

* as Dean of architecture and planning at two major US universities and as member and President of NAAB:  shaping the core curriculum from which urban designers take their originating principles, and molding the values and skills of fellow educators and students, in teaching and design organization leadership;

* as a principal in highly-regarded urban design and planning firms in Philadelphia and Seattle:  modeling the forms of design practice, making a learning laboratory of practice and a practical experience of learning; and 

* in extensive urban design and planning consulting in several cities at and major American universities:  influencing the form of campuses and cities across the nation.

In partnership with his wife, Rolaine Vines Copeland Hon. AIA, Lee also contributed to the legacy of architecture and design through work in K-12 education, reflecting their shared values and commitments.

The cumulative achievement has marked the way Americans live in and learn from the urban environment, and has merited national acknowledgment, honor, and exemplification by the professional colleagues and heirs of Lee Copeland.