Designer of WTC Memorial to speak at inaugural Thomas D. Galloway Lecture

Sharon Perry Galloway of Roswell, Ga., and Lawrence established the lecture series in memory of her husband, Thomas Galloway, who died in 2007. Thomas Galloway was the founding chair of the graduate program in urban planning in KU’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning, where he was a professor from 1971 to 1980.

Sharon Perry Galloway established the lecture series through KU Endowment to bring speakers to the university who are leaders in architecture and urban planning. Arad was mentored by Thomas Galloway at the Georgia Institute of Technology. In 2004, judges for the World Trade Center memorial design committee selected Arad’s design from more than 5,000 submitted.

The judges described Arad’s design, “Reflecting Absence,” as “a memorial that expresses both the incalculable loss of life and its consoling renewal, and a place where everyone can come together to remember from generation to generation.”

Arad said the field of urban planning lost a champion when Galloway died. He described Galloway as a champion for the expansion of knowledge about architecture and the environment. Galloway encouraged his students to deepen their understanding of the present by studying social, cultural, economical, environmental, ideological and philosophical entities. Galloway charged his students to go out into the world and change it with a sense of responsibility and humility.

Galloway’s pleasant personality enhanced his teaching, Arad said.

“When thinking of Dean Galloway, the first thing that comes to my mind is his smile,” Arad said. “It was a smile that was genuinely friendly and amused, an opening salvo in an intellectual exchange that would challenge his students to consider a viewpoint they had not conceived of before.”

Kirk McClure, professor of architecture at KU, said students will benefit from meeting with architectural and urban planning leaders such as Arad.

“When they have the opportunity to meet with these people face to face, the students learn so much more,” McClure said.

After leaving KU, Galloway held a faculty position at the University of Rhode Island. He later served as dean and professor in the College of Design at Iowa State University. In 1992, he was named dean of the College of Architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Galloway was well-known for establishing partnerships with Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Architecture de Paris LaVillette in France and the Shenynag Technological University in China. He chaired a team that reviewed a new College of Engineering and Design at the University of Abu Dhabi and served as an urban planning consultant to the Sheik.

During his stellar career, Galloway was honored academically and professionally. He was listed among the “30 Leaders Who Bridge Practice and Education” in America’s Best Architecture and Design Schools, published in the 2005 edition of Design Intelligence, and was named a Lexus Leader of the Arts by Public Broadcasting Atlanta.