Photo courtesy Robert P. Madison

In 1954, Robert P. Madison, FAIA, opened Ohio’s first firm owned by a black architect.

Ed Feiner, FAIA, former chief architect of the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), has joined the Washington, D.C., office of Perkins+Will as principal. Feiner founded the GSA’s Design Excellence Program and was instrumental in developing the agency’s green-building standards.

Robert P. Madison, FAIA, who in 1954 opened Ohio’s first practice owned by a black architect, was chosen to deliver the commencement address at the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Madison, a World War II veteran, holds an M.Arch. from Harvard and studied at the L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris as a Fulbright scholar. In 1982, he founded the Ohio Association of Minority Architects and Engineers.

The AIA has announced the four recipients of the 2009 Jason Pettigrew Memorial ARE Scholarships: Jill C. Finn, Venesa Alicea, Melissa Kegan Tom, and Ha Pham. The award covers the cost of the Architecture Registration Exam.

The American Academy of Arts and Letters hosted its annual award ceremony on May 20. Stan Allen, Wendell Burnette, and Jeffrey Kipnis received the $7,500 prizes given in the architecture category; Juhani Pallasmaa received the $5,000 Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture. Additionally, architect Tod Williams was inducted into the 111-year-old academy.