The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has awarded its Gold Medal, the highest honor in its repertory, since 1848. This year, on Wednesday, at a black-tie ceremony in RIBA’s stately Art Deco building in London, Zaha Hadid, Hon. FAIA, officially received the award, the first woman in the institute's history to win it in her own right.
In the context of England’s clubby association of architects, still very much a fraternity, awarding the Gold Medal to an Iraqi-born exponent of a radically unorthodox modernism—perhaps best known here for twice winning the Cardiff Opera House competition, only to be rejected twice under cloudy circumstances—was a very big deal. Per protocol, Queen Elizabeth II approved the award. Prince Charles, the architectural traditionalist, was probably not amused.
Though Hadid was trained at London’s Architectural Association, and has practiced in the city since her graduation in 1977, it seems every major international architectural prize beat RIBA in honoring the architect: the Pritzker Prize was awarded in 2004, Japan’s Praemium Imperiale Prize in 2009, and the Queen even dubbed her Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2012. Though RIBA twice awarded Hadid the Stirling Prize and numerous specific building citations, a deep moat of silence surrounded the institute regarding the Gold Medal. Hadid was conspicuous by her absence on the list.
Finally, this year, under the direction of Jane Duncan (only the third female RIBA president), the institute has redressed the “oversight.” Sir Peter Cook, Luisa Hutton, and David Chipperfield, Hon. FAIA, architects with an international point of view, nominated her.
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