Honoring the memory of the noted Austrian-born architect, the SCI-Arc Raimund Abraham Lecture Series presents an annual lecture by an architect of the highest stature in a public forum that embodies the spirit of the independent and uncompromising Abraham. Pritzker Prize–winning architect Thom Mayne delivers the second annual Raimund Abraham Lecture, with an introduction by SCI-Arc Director Eric Owen Moss.

A product of the anti-establishment of the 1960s, Thom Mayne was among the seven faculty members and forty students who, in 1972, created SCI-Arc, "a college without walls." Mayne's firm Morphosis Architects, also formed in 1972, was founded as an interdisciplinary and collective practice involved in experimental design and rigorous research. With Morphosis, Mayne has been the recipient of twenty-five Progressive Architecture awards, over 100 American Institute of Architects awards and numerous other design recognitions. Under his direction, the firm has been the subject of various group and solo exhibitions. He was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2005. Some of his best-known commissions include the Caltrans Building in Los Angeles; the San Francisco Federal Building; 41 Cooper Square, the Cooper Union's new academic building in Manhattan; the Phare Tower in Paris and the pre-fabricated housing prototype FLOAT House in New Orleans.

Eric Owen Moss Architects was founded in 1973. Their office, located in Los Angeles, is currently staffed with twenty-five professionals designing and constructing projects in the United States and internationally. The firm has garnered over sixty design awards from Progressive Architecture and the American Institute of Architects. In 1999, Moss won the Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; in 2001, the firm won the LA–AIA Gold Medal for Design. Moss holds MArch degrees from both Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley. Moss was appointed SCI-Arc director in 2002.

The Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) was founded in 1972 and educates architects and designers who will imagine and shape our built environment and the way we live and interact. SCI-Arc's mission is to: 1) examine everything about the built environment—from design and materials to culture and experience; 2) ask provocative questions to prompt new theoretical constructs; 3) lead the discussion on the future of architecture; 4) foster debate and understanding with public programs that are woven into the cultural fabric of the community; and 5) create designs that change how people interact with each other and their environment.