President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. has appointed Peter Cook, Hazel Ruth Edwards, Justin Garrett Moore, and Billie Tsien to serve four-year terms on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts in Washington, D.C.
Peter D. Cook is an architect based in Washington, D.C., where he is currently a design principal at HGA Architects & Engineers. His previous work as an associate partner and design principal with Davis Brody Bond includes many prominent institutional projects in Washington, including the collaboration with Adjaye Associates, the Freelon Group, and SmithGroup for the design of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, as well as the Watha T. Daniel/Shaw Neighborhood Library, the East Gateway Pavilion at the St. Elizabeths campus, and the renovation of the South African Embassy. His current work includes such projects as the new D.C. Lamond-Riggs Neighborhood Library, the Northern Virginia Science Center, and the Contemplative Site at Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Cook holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University and a Master of Architecture degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. His professional experience includes work as a designer with Skidmore Owings & Merrill, Rafael Viñoly Architects, and Gensler. He is a member of the Washington, D.C., chapter of the American Institute of Architects, and he serves currently on the board of the Washington Architectural Foundation, the Institute’s non-profit affiliate. A member of the Washington, D.C., chapter of the National Association of Minority Architects, he served previously as the organization’s chapter president and as a regional vice president. He has participated as an expert panelist for the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, and he is a Peer Professional for the GSA’s Design Excellence Program.
Dr. Hazel Ruth Edwards is an educator and planner whose career combines place-based research with planning and urban design practice and teaching. She currently serves as professor and chair of the Department of Architecture of the College of Engineering and Architecture of Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she is the first female department chair since architecture education was established in 1911. She began her professional career at Howard University, where she undertook research on the development of the campus that led to the university’s 1998 Central Campus Plan, as well as publication of the history The Long Walk: The Placemaking Legacy of Howard University, co-authored with University Vice President Harry G. Robinson III; she then served as the principal planner for both the West Campus and Central Campus. She has been on the faculty of the graduate program in City and Regional Planning at the Institute of Architecture and Planning of Morgan State University in Baltimore and the faculty of the School of Architecture and Planning at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where she was the founding director of the school’s Master of City and Regional Planning program.
Edwards, the granddaughter of the first Black registered architect in North Carolina, was raised in Washington, D.C. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Howard University, a Master of Architecture in Urban Design degree from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in Regional Planning from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. She was a Carolina Minority Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a certified planner with the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) and was elected to its College of Fellows in 2018; she was appointed to its Fellows Committee in 2021. She has served on the Harvard University Graduate School of Design’s Alumni Council since 2020. Her teaching was recognized with the 2009 Lankford Giles Vaughn Award for Professor of Architecture of the Year by the Washington, D.C., chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects.
Justin Garrett Moore is a transdisciplinary designer and urbanist. He serves as the program officer for the Humanities in Place program at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, where his work focuses on advancing equity, inclusion, and social justice through place-based initiatives, built environments, cultural heritage projects, digital and ephemeral programs, and commemorative spaces and landscapes. He has extensive experience in architecture, planning, and design—from urban systems, policies, and building projects to grassroots and community-focused planning, design, preservation, public realm, and arts initiatives. He is also the co-founder of Urban Patch, a social enterprise focused on sustainable design and development projects in the United States and Rwanda.
With over fifteen years of public service with the City of New York with work in diverse contexts, Moore has led several urban design and planning projects, including the Greenpoint Williamsburg Waterfront, Hunter’s Point South, and the Brooklyn Cultural District. From 2016 to 2020, he was the executive director of the New York City Public Design Commission, where he led initiatives to address social equity and inclusion and sustainability through built environment design and public processes. His wide-ranging work addresses issues of housing and community development, place and open space design, historic preservation, public art and monuments, and civic engagement. He has lectured internationally at universities, government agencies, and civic and professional organizations on a range of design, urbanism, and policy topics.
Moore holds a Bachelor of Design degree from the University of Florida and Master of Architecture and Master of Science in Urban Design degrees from Columbia University, where he is now an Adjunct Associate Professor of Architecture. He has taught at Morgan State University, Tuskegee University, and the Yale School of Architecture, and has been a member of the Dark Matter University network. His professional affiliations include the American Planning Association, the American Institute of Certified Planners, the National Organization of Minority Architects, and the Urban Design Forum. He is a founding member of the Black urbanist collective BlackSpace and serves on the boards of ioby.org and the Youth Design Center; he has served on advisory boards for Columbia World Projects, the Van Alen Institute, The Museum of Modern Art, and Dumbarton Oaks. In 2021, he was honored with the Award in Architecture of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Billie Tsien is an architect and a founding partner with Tod Williams of the New York City-based studio Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners. The firm’s work is committed to reflecting the values of non-profit, cultural, and academic institutions through an architecture that is serene and enduring. Prominent examples include academic building projects at Princeton University, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, Haverford College, Bennington College, and the University of California, Berkeley. Some of their public and institutional projects include the Phoenix Art Museum, the Hood Museum of Art in Hanover, New Hampshire, the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, and the Lefrak Center at Lakeside in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. They have long collaborated with artists as part of their practice, recently as the exhibit designers for “Martin Puryear: Liberty/Libertà” representing the U.S. Pavilion of the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. The firm’s current work includes the renovation of the David Geffen Hall at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York, the U.S. Embassy Complex in Mexico City, and the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.
Tsien holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Yale University and a Master of Architecture degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is currently the Charles Gwathmey Professor in Practice at Yale University and contributes to a range of cultural institutions such as the Architectural League of New York, the National Academy of Design, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy in Rome and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, where she serves as president. Her work has been recognized with the Thomas Jefferson Medal Award in Architecture and the Architecture Firm Award of the American Institute of Architects, the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize, and the National Medal of Arts. Tsien is steadfast in her mission to create a better world through architecture and to contribute to supporting a broader and more diverse cultural landscape.