On September 23rd, we held our first lecture in the series “Beauty and the Beach: Morris Lapidus and MiMo Architecture.” Our next Lapidus lecture is this Thursday, October 7th: Click here to register.

Speaker Bios:

Arleen Pabón PhD JD, Retired Professor, School of Architecture + Engineering Technology, Florida A&M University

Arleen Pabon-Charneco holds a PhD from Northwestern University, as well as a JD, MArch and BED from the University of Puerto Rico. With the highest GPA of her graduating class, she obtained the Henry Adams AIA Medal in 1974. Since 1979 she has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at the University of Puerto Rico and Florida A&M University in the areas of architectural history, architectural theory and philosophy, architectural design and historic preservation. At both institutions she served as assistant and associate Dean.

Dr Pabon-Charneco was Puerto Rico’s State Historic Preservation Officer twice. She is a member of the Washington DC Bar, as well as a trustee emeritus of both the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Puerto Rico Conservation Trust. In addition, she is a corresponding academician of the St Jordi Royal Academy of Fines Arts of Catalonia. A consultant in architectural history, historic preservation and cultural interpretation, she is also an instructor at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Florida State University.

Alex Quinlan PhD MFA

Alex Quinlan’s poetry, nonfiction and reviews have appeared in the Beloit Poetry Journal and Tampa Review, among others. He has received awards and fellowships from the AWP Intro Journals Project, the Academy of American Poets, the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets, and the Vermont Studio Center. He has served as editor-in-chief of The Southeast Review, as well as a contributing editor at Tusculum Review.

Dr. Quinlan holds an MFA in Poetry at Washington University in Saint Louis, where following graduation he was the Third-Year Fellow in Poetry. He also holds a PhD in English, with a focus in poetry and cultural studies, from Florida State University, where he was given the Ruth and Bertram Davis for Outstanding Graduate Student Career. He is a lecturer at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he teaches courses in creative writing in the Department of English and leads the Brock Scholars Freshman Humanities Seminar in the Honors College.

Deborah Desilets

Deborah Desilets, an architect and artist, was Morris Lapidus’s last collaborator. She first met Lapidus in 1993 when she was the marketing director for the Miami-based architectural firm Arquitectonica, after founding their computer lab in 1988. Soon after, Desilets left to create her own firm where subsequently she was able to work with Lapidus on a number of design projects which explored each of his illustrious career’s building types. Desilets has lectured extensively nationally and internationally on Lapidus body of work and is the author of “Morris Lapidus: The Architecture of Joy,” published by Rizzoli. In 2012, Desilets gifted the archive left to her by Morris Lapidus to Syracuse University; the repository of Lapidus work since the 1960’s. Desilets is the owner of the Morris Lapidus trademark and continues production under that mark.