The architect and CCA Founding Director Emeritus Phyllis Lambert has won the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize, which recognizes an architect of any nationality who has made a significant contribution to architecture as an art.

Lambert "is the conscience of modern and contemporary architecture, protecting its past and advocating for its future as a vital art form," said jury chairman Elizabeth Diller.

The Academy’s annual architecture awards program began in 1955 with the inauguration of the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize and has since expanded to include four Arts and Letters Awards. This year’s winners were chosen from a group of 35 individuals and practices nominated by the members of the Academy. The jurors were Elizabeth Diller (chairman), Henry Cobb, Peter Eisenman, Kenneth Frampton, Hugh Hardy, Steven Holl, Cesar Pelli, James Polshek, Robert A. M. Stern, and Tod Williams.

The Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize includes a $20,000 award and is given to an architect of any nationality who has made a significant contribution to architecture as an art.

“Phyllis Lambert has made an enormous contribution to how we think about architecture and cities. She has raised awareness and standards of research, scholarship, heritage preservation, and design to the highest levels,” added chair of the CCA trustees Bruce Kuwabara.

The Academy also recognized McGill-trained Canadian Eric Bunge and Mimi Hoang, co-founders of New York City-based firm nArchitects, with one of four Arts and Letters Awards in Architecture. Each $10,000 prize recognizes an American architect or firm whose work is characterized by a strong personal direction.

The awards will be presented in New York City in May at the Academy’s annual Ceremonial. Work by the winners will be featured in an upcoming exhibition on view in the Academy’s galleries on Audubon Terrace from May 19 to June 12.

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Phyllis Lambert (born January 24, 1927 in Montreal) is an architect, author, scholar, and activist, and is the Founding Director Emeritus and formerly Director and Chair of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) which she established in Montreal in 1979.

Lambert first made architectural history as the Director of Planning of the Seagram Building (1954-58) in New York City. Actively engaged in advancing contemporary architecture, as well as the social issues of urban conservation, Lambert founded Héritage Montréal in 1975, and in 1979 was instrumental in establishing the Société d'Amélioration de Milton-Parc, the largest non-profit cooperative housing renovation project in Canada. In 1996, she formed the Fonds d’Investissement de Montréal (FIM), the only private investment fund in Canada participating in the revitalization of housing in low- and medium-income neighbourhoods. For 23 years, Lambert served on the Board of the Vieux Port de Montréal, where she established public consultation as an instrument of planning. Spearheading the revival of Montréal’s downtown west quarter through the roundtable she initiated in 2005, Lambert’s involvement in shaping the city continues also through the Institute of Policy Alternatives of Montréal (IPAM) which she presides. For her tenacious engagement in advancing the role of architecture in the public realm, from Seagram to the CCA, Lambert received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale. In 2016, the Wolf Foundation in Israel bestowed upon Lambert its Wolf Prize in Arts for her six decades of championing innovation in building design and preservation of properties of patrimonial significance, and for invigorating the profession and research into architecture, which she infuses with intellectual doubt and political critique.  Last year, she also received the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize 2016 Architecture Awards from The American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York.

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Published on: April 3, 2016
Cite: "Phyllis Lambert wins Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/phyllis-lambert-wins-arnold-w-brunner-memorial-prize> ISSN 1139-6415
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