2014 Washburn Award Recipient

Credited with coining the term “information architecture,” Wurman chaired the IDCA Conference in 1972, the First Federal Design assembly in 1973, and the annual AIA Conference in 1976. He has written, designed, and published more than 80 books on divergent topics, including the ACCESS travel series, several books on healthcare, The Notebooks and Drawings of Louis I. Kahn, and What Will Be Has Always Been.

He has been awarded several honorary doctorates, Graham Fellowships, a Guggenheim, and numerous grants from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as serving as the Distinguished Professor at Northeastern University. He is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Smithsonian, Cooper-Hewitt Museum.

Wurman created and chaired several conferences: TED and TEDMED, as well as EG, and the WWW conference. His major cartographic project with ESRI and Radical Media is called the Urban Observatory, which will open in February 2015 at the restored Smithsonian Castle on the Mall in Washington, D.C.

Born on March 26, 1935, grew up in Philadelphia. He received both bachelor and master’s degrees in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania.