Robert Louis Geddes (December 7, 1923 – February 13, 2023) was an American architect, planner, writer, educator, past principal of the firm Geddes Brecher Qualls Cunningham (GBQC), and dean emeritus of the Princeton University School of Architecture (1965-1982).
[1] As principal of GBQC, select major projects include Pender Labs at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia Police Headquarters, the Liberty State Park master plan, the Philadelphia Center City master plan, and his best-known work, the Dining Commons, Birch Garden, and Academic Building at the Institute for Advanced Study.
His university studies were interrupted by three years in the United States Army Air Forces from 1942 to 1945.
Prior to founding GBQC, he worked briefly for Hugh Stubbins, Jr. in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
He was GBQC design partner or co-partner for the Pender Labs at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania; the Police Headquarters of the City of Philadelphia; Richard Stockton College in New Jersey; Hill Hall at Rutgers University-Newark; the College of Liberal Arts of Southern Illinois University; the Architects Housing in Trenton, New Jersey; Princeton Community Housing's Griggs Farm neighborhood; and probably best known, the Dining Hall and Birch Garden quad at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
He was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Design, and GBQC was awarded the highest professional honor of the American Institute for Architects, the Architecture Firm Award (1979), for "design quality, respect for the environment, and social concern."
He worked with the City University of New York's Newman Institute on alternatives for the Hudson Yards in midtown Manhattan.
He moved to Princeton University in 1965 to become the first Dean of the School of Architecture, and was William Kennan Professor Emeritus.