Expert on Cuban Architecture to Speak at U.Va.

March 27, 2012 — Architect Belmont Freeman will give the Kelly-Tukee Lecture in Historic Preservation at the University of Virginia School of Architecture on April 2, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., in Campbell Hall's Javor Lecture Hall, room 158.

"Architecture of the Cuban Revolution: Modernism, Preservation and the Constructed Past" will examine the remarkable avant-garde design produced in Cuba during the first, heroic phase of the revolution and how today's politicized preservation issues are shaping the story of modernism in Cuba.

Freeman is the founding principal of Belmont Freeman Architects, an award-winning New York City design firm, and an adjunct professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where he teaches a design studio within the historic preservation program.

An American of Cuban descent, Freeman has researched, written and lectured extensively on the subject of Cuban architecture. In 2004, he co-produced, with Havana-based curator Eduardo Luis Rodríguez, the landmark exhibition, "Architecture and Revolution in Cuba, 1959-1969" at Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York.

Freeman received his B.A. from Yale University and his master of architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. He served as president of the board of directors of Storefront for Art & Architecture from 1998 to 2007. He lectures widely on his work and other areas of architectural and historical research, and is a frequent guest critic for the review of student work at universities throughout the Northeast. He is on the board of directors of the Society of Architectural Historians, and has served on the board of governors of the Association of Yale Alumni.