Peter Bohlin’s body of work and influence on the profession have been deep and long-lasting. In 1994, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson received the AIA Architecture Firm Award, the institute’s highest honor for a firm. And in 2010, Bohlin received the AIA Gold Medal, the highest honor an individual can receive from the institute.

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Bohlin’s work first came to national attention in 1975 when Forest House, a summer house for his parents in West Cornwall, Connecticut, appeared on the cover of The New York Times Magazine. An early National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects came in 1984 when the Shelly Ridge Girl Scout Center was recognized for its solar design strategies. The Shelly Ridge project was also the recipient of a grant for Commercial Passive Solar Demonstration from the United States Department of Energy. Subsequent projects like the firm’s work at Fallingwater, Frick Environmental Center, the Ballard Library, and the Pocono Environmental Education Center, evidence Bohlin’s continued fascination with and commitment to resiliency and sustainability.

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Bohlin’s contributions to college and university campuses stretch across the United States and have consistently aimed to give dignity to preexisting structures while integrating modernist design, humane experience and the latest technical facilities. In 1989, Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute in Pittsburgh became Bohlin’s first urban project to receive wide recognition. Writing for Architectural Record James Russell called it the “soft machine” writing “…respectful of both place and program; there is a kind of architectural hum as aspects of its heterogeneous neighbors resonate throughout.”

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"[H]e makes great architecture for people. Peter moves from the log cabin to the glass box, from the initial conceptual sensibilities to the finely executed detail, from the abode to the civic center, with the same unassailable ethic. Peter Bohlin reconnects us to that sense of awe and wonder of architecture in the landscape."

James Timberlake, presentation at the AIA 2010 Gold Medal Award Committee

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Peter Bohlin grew up in New York and New England. Since childhood he has been deeply interested in the human circumstance and how architecture can enhance and elevate the experience of our surroundings. He holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Master of Architecture degree from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Bohlin’s years at Cranbrook were influenced by the presence of Eero Saarinen. A Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, Bohlin served as Chairman of the AIA Committee on Design from 1984 to 1985.

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