2026 Thomas U. Walter Award Recipient - Robert Shuman Jr., AIA LEED AP

Congratulations to Robert Shuman Jr., AIA LEED AP on being selected as the 2026 Thomas U. Walter Award Recipient!

The Thomas U. Walter Award is presented annually to a current member of the architectural profession and is intended to recognize their contributions to the architectural community through their service to the American Institute of Architects and other related professional organizations. Bob is beyond deserving of this award, and we are happy to present this award at the 2026 Board Induction.

About Robert

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 over a dozen years of teaching in the MArch professional degree program. He served as the Architecture program head from fall 2019 through spring 2023. Professor 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.