AED Presents: Lake House: One step at a time with Bob Shuman and Joyce Lenhardt
Join us for an overview of Robert ‘Bob’ Shuman’s trajectory as an architect and educator, including the presence of his partner Joyce Lenhardt.
Robert Shuman’s practice is dedicated to the making of consequential works in real space and time, with craft and consideration both of their sustenance of essential human experience and appreciation of their impact on our common environment. He considers the architecture of both large scale buildings and small scale furniture pieces as the careful assembly of elements with fundamentally different (and often contradictory) physical, economic and experiential properties. He believes architecture owes as much to thoughtful construction as it does to intellectual explication. This perspective, rooted in his early training as a carpenter and furniture maker, remains his compass through years of practice and nearly a decade of teaching in the MArch professional degree program.
Shuman has over 35 years of institutional architectural practice with contributions to projects for institutions and public agencies. Many of these projects received environmental certification, design awards and publication. He served as principal/project director for over four years on Temple University’s Morgan Hall, completed in 2013, received three American Institute of Architects awards.
In addition to his professional practice, Professor Shuman has four decades of individual design practice, including furniture prototype design and fabrication, featuring domestic hardwoods and traditional joinery combined with contemporary mechanical connectors and residential design and construction with his wife Joyce Lenhardt.
Joyce Lenhardt (BArch '82), AIA, LEED AP is one of the leads at Lenhardt Rodgers, where she provides programming and design for many of the firm’s projects with a particular interest and strength in master planning. Noted for her quick understanding of issues facing organizations from a client perspective, Joyce has extensive experience working with diverse groups in planning and reaching consensus.
Joyce holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Temple University where she and Philip Rodgers were classmates and where she is a member of the newly formed Advisory Committee. Joyce advances the field of architecture as a frequent invited visiting critic at many colleges and universities in the region. She is one of the founding members of the Philadelphia chapter of AIA Design For Aging. She is a member of the Carpenters’ Company of the City and County of Philadelphia. Founded in 1724, it is the oldest extant craft guild in the United States.
With a passion for mission-based organizations, Joyce contributes her time and expertise to a wide variety of non-profit organizations in her own community as well as the wider Philadelphia region. Her extensive knowledge of Zoning and Planning issues through her volunteer involvement with the Chestnut Hill Land Use Planning and Zoning Committee and her past and present Board memberships provide her with an understanding of the issues facing organizations from the perspective of the client and helps inform projects from concept to construction. Joyce is a board member and past president of Lifecycle WomanCare (formerly the Bryn Mawr Birth Center), past chair of the Philadelphia Protestant Home Visionary Committee, past board of managers of Stapeley in Germantown, as well as many other organizations supported throughout her career.