Freed first worked in Chicago and New York City, including with
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, a prominent modernist architect. In 1956, he began working with
I.M. Pei in New York at the firm eventually known as
Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. In the late 1970s, Freed was a member of the
Chicago Seven, a group which emerged in opposition to the
doctrinal application of
modernism, as represented particularly in Chicago by the followers of Mies van der Rohe. From 1975 to 1978, Freed was dean of the School of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, whose campus had been designed by van der Rohe. He also taught at
Cooper Union,
Cornell University, the
Rhode Island School of Design,
Columbia University, and
Yale University. Freed's major works include the
Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in
New York City, the San Francisco Main Public Library, and the
United States Air Force Memorial in
Arlington, Virginia next to the Pentagon, which was still under construction at the time of his death. His bright white-and-glass design of
88 Pine Street (Wall Street Plaza) won an award. He designed several major buildings in Washington, D.C.: the
Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center and the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He worked with
I.M. Pei on the design of the
Kips Bay Plaza project in New York City. In 1988, he was elected into the
National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1994. In 1995, Freed was awarded the
National Medal of Arts. He died on December 15, 2005, of
Parkinson's disease, at age 75 in his home in Manhattan, in New York City. ==Gallery==