The Royal Gold Medal for architecture [1] is awarded annually by the Royal Institute of British Architects on behalf of the British monarch, in recognition of an individual's or group's substantial contribution to international architecture. It is given for a distinguished body of work rather than for one building and is therefore not awarded for merely being currently fashionable.
The medal was first awarded in 1848 to Charles Robert Cockerell, and its second recipient was the Italian Luigi Canina in 1849. The winners include some of the most influential architects of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1864), Frank Lloyd Wright (1941), Le Corbusier (1953), Walter Gropius (1956), Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1959) and Buckminster Fuller (1968). Candidates of all nationalities are eligible to receive the award.
Not all recipients were architects. Also recognised were engineers such as Ove Arup (1966) and Peter Rice (1992), who undoubtedly played an outstanding role in the realisation of some of the 20th century's key buildings all over the world. Repeatedly, the prize was awarded to influential writers on architecture, including scholars such as the Rev Robert Willis (1862), Sir Nikolaus Pevsner (1967), and Sir John Summerson (1976), as well as theoreticians such as Lewis Mumford (1961) and Colin Rowe (1995). It honoured archaeologists such as Sir Austen Henry Layard (1868), Karl Richard Lepsius (1869), Melchior de Vogüé (1879), Heinrich Schliemann (1885), Rodolfo Lanciani (1900) and Sir Arthur Evans (1909), and painters such as Lord Leighton (1894), and Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1906). Another notable exception was the 1999 award to the city of Barcelona.
The Royal Institute of British Architects Stirling Prize is a British prize for excellence in architecture. It is named after the architect James Stirling, organised and awarded annually by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). The Stirling Prize is presented to "the architects of the building that has made the greatest contribution to the evolution of architecture in the past year". The architects must be RIBA members. Until 2014, the building could have been anywhere in the European Union, but since 2015 entries have had to be in the United Kingdom. In the past, the award included a £20,000 prize, but it currently carries no prize money.
Sir Michael John Hopkins was an English architect.
Yasmeen Lari is Pakistan's first female architect. She is best known for her involvement in the intersection of architecture and social justice. Since her official retirement from architectural practice in 2000, her UN-recognized NGO Heritage Foundation Pakistan has been taking on humanitarian relief work and historical conservation projects in rural villages all around Pakistan. She was awarded the prestigious Fukuoka Prize in 2016 and the RIBA's Royal Gold Medal in 2023.
Sir Nicholas Grimshaw is a prominent English architect, particularly noted for several modernist buildings, including London's Waterloo International railway station and the Eden Project in Cornwall. He was President of the Royal Academy from 2004 to 2011. He was chairman of Grimshaw Architects from its foundation to 2019, when he was succeeded by Andrew Whalley. He is a recipient of the RIBA Gold Medal.
Sir David Frank Adjaye is a Ghanaian-British architect who has designed many notable buildings around the world, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.. Adjaye was knighted in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to architecture. He received the 2021 Royal Gold Medal, making him the first African recipient and one of the youngest recipients. He was appointed to the Order of Merit in 2022.
Lesley Naa Norle Lokko is a Ghanaian-Scottish academic, and novelist. From 2019 to 2020, she was a professor and served as dean of the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture in New York, in addition to holding teaching and other positions in Johannesburg, London, Accra and Edinburgh.
Yvonne Farrell is an Irish architect and academic. She is the co-founder, together with Shelley McNamara, of Grafton Architects, which won the World Building of the Year award in 2008 for their Bocconi University building in Milan. The practice won the inaugural RIBA International Prize in 2016 for their Universidad de Ingeniería y Tecnología building in Lima, Peru, and was awarded the 2020 Royal Gold Medal. In 2017 she was appointed, along with Shelley McNamara, as curator of the 16th Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2018. She won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2020, also with McNamara.
The year 2014 in architecture involved some significant architectural events and new buildings.
The year 2015 in architecture involved some significant architectural events and new buildings.
The year 2017 in architecture included the demolishment of a major brutalist building, several dedications and openings of new buildings, and two major disasters.
The year 2018 in architecture involved some significant architectural events and new buildings.
The year 2016 in architecture involved some significant architectural events and new buildings.
The year 2020 in architecture involved some significant architectural events and new buildings.
Oliver Wainwright is a British architecture and design critic. He has written for the British newspapers The Guardian and The Times and is the Features Editor for the industry magazine Building Design. He trained and worked as an architect before becoming a journalist
Neave Brown was an American-born British architect and artist. He specialized in modernist housing. Brown is the only architect to have had all his UK work listed: a row of houses in Winscombe Street, the Dunboyne Road Estate and Alexandra Road Estate, all located in Camden.
Shelley McNamara is an Irish architect and academic. She attended University College Dublin and graduated in 1974 with a Bachelor of Architecture. She founded Grafton Architects with Yvonne Farrell in 1978. Grafton rose to prominence in the early 2010s, specialising in stark, weighty but spacious buildings for higher education. McNamara has taught architecture at University College Dublin since 1976 and at several other universities.
Feilden Fowles is an architectural firm based in London. It was formed in 2009 by Fergus Feilden and Edmund Fowles, who first collaborated while studying at the University of Cambridge. The practice has been recipient of several awards including Young Architect of the Year 2016. Alongside practice, Feilden Fowles has taught a studio unit at Sir John Cass School of Art, Architecture and Design, London Metropolitan University since 2015.
The year 2021 in architecture involved some significant architectural events and new buildings.
Part W are a British collective of women working in architecture, design, infrastructure and construction working to challenge the systems that disadvantage women and calling for gender mainstreaming in the built environment. The collective was founded by Zoë Berman in 2018 and is co-chaired by Alice Brownfield. The group are multidisciplinary team including architects, journalists, academics, clients. There are around 12 core members and all projects feature an element of crowd sourcing.