Temple University

ON LEAVE, FALL 2023

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.
  
BArch, Temple University, 1982
BA, Cornell University, 1973

Selected Awards
Bronze Award (2017)
Pennsylvania Chapter AIA
Shipley School Student Center/Resource Center, Shipley School
Bryn Mawr, PA 

Honor Award (2015)
Pennsylvania Chapter AIA 
Morgan Hall Student Residences, Temple University
Philadelphia, PA 

Merit Award for Design Excellence (2012)
Philadelphia Chapter AIA
Salvation Army Kroc Center
Philadelphia, PA