Robert Adam Receives Major Architectural Prize

Robert Adam has been named the 15th Richard H. Driehaus Prize Laureate, A documentary has been produced in connection with this award and you can watch it here:  http://interactive.wttw.com/adam/video

Robert Adam, director of leading Classical and Traditional architect practice ADAM Architecture and an architect known for his scholarship as well as his practice, has been named the recipient of the 2017 Richard H. Driehaus Prize at the University of Notre Dame, the highest value architecture award in the world.

Adam, the 15th Driehaus Prize laureate, was awarded the $200,000 prize and a bronze miniature of the Choregic Monument of Lysikrates during a ceremony on Saturday 25th March 2017 in Chicago.  Previous winners of the Driehaus prize include Leon Krier and Quinlan Terry.

The Richard H. Driehaus Prize at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana USA, was established in 2003 to honour lifetime contributions to traditional, classical and sustainable architecture and urbanism in the modern world. The prize is awarded annually to a living architect whose work has had positive cultural, environmental and artistic impact in keeping with the highest ideals of classical architecture in contemporary society.

“Throughout his career, Robert Adam has engaged the critical issues of our time, challenging contemporary attitudes toward architecture and urban design. He has written extensively on the tensions between globalism and regionalism as we shape our built environment,” said Michael Lykoudis, Driehaus Prize jury chair and Francis and Kathleen Rooney Dean of Notre Dame’s School of Architecture. “Sustainability is at the foundation of his work, achieved through urbanism and architecture that is respectful of local climate, culture and building customs.”

"Robert Adam has made seminal contributions to establishing a dialogue between tradition and modernity," said Richard H. Driehaus, founder, chairman and chief investment officer of Chicago-based Driehaus Capital Management LLC. "He has had tremendous success by experimenting with contemporary materials and methods within the context of local and regional traditions." 

Adam works with clients on a wide range of projects including master planning, public and commercial buildings, extensions to historic buildings and private houses.

He is the author of numerous essays as well as books, most notably Classical Architecture: A Complete Handbook (1990), The Globalisation of Modern Architecture (2012) and Classic Columns: 40 years of writing on architecture, which will be published at the end of January 2017.   

Adam is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, an Academician at the Academy of Urbanism, a Senior Fellow of the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment (Heritage) and founder and past-Chair of the College of Chapters at INTBAU (UK).  He has been a Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) award judge for nine years, was twice elected by membership to the governing RIBA Council, and from 2001 to 2003 became Honorary Secretary, at which time he founded the Traditional Architecture Group.

Robert Adam received his architectural education at Westminster University and was a Rome Scholar in 1972-3. In 1977 he became a Director of the architectural and urban design practice now known as ADAM Architecture. Adam was active in the founding of the International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture & Urbanism (INTBAU), an organization established in 2001 to connect organizations and practitioners interested in traditional architecture and urbanism and bring their ideas to a wider audience.

The award ceremony on March 25 will also honour the Henry Hope Reed Award laureate, James S. Ackerman, who until his death several weeks ago was the Arthur Kingsley Professor of Fine Arts Emeritus at Harvard University. Perhaps best known for his studies of Michelangelo and Palladio, Ackerman produced an extensive body of original scholarship, skilfully written and carefully sourced. Ackerman received his bachelor’s degree from Yale in 1941 and went on to further studies at New York University, earning a master's degree in 1947 and doctorate in 1952.

“James Ackerman’s immense contributions to contemporary understanding of Renaissance architecture have greatly influenced not only the field of architectural history but the practice of architecture today,” stated Driehaus. “His work brought the past to life, allowing generations of architects to learn from the early masters of the craft.”

Recipients of this year’s awards were selected by a jury composed of Adele Chatfield-Taylor, president emerita of the American Academy in Rome; Robert Davis, developer and founder of Seaside, Florida; Paul Goldberger, contributing editor at Vanity Fair; Léon Krier, architect and urban planner; Demetri Porphyrios, principal of Porphyrios Associates.

For more information about the Driehaus Prize, visit www.DriehausPrize.org

Driehaus Prize

 Award Ceremony

Robert Adam will receive the 2017 Richard H. Driehaus Prize at the University of Notre Dame during a ceremony at 11 a.m. Saturday, March 25 at the John B. Murphy Auditorium, 50 East Erie Street, Chicago. Local architects and patrons of the arts and architecture are invited to attend. Reservations are not required and the event is free and open to the public. The ceremony will include an excerpt of WTTW Channel 11’s documentary introduced by Geoffrey Baer, an Emmy Award-winning producer and program host for WTTW.

Choregic Monument

The Choregic Monument of Lysikrates in Athens is best known as the first use of the Corinthian Order on the outside of a building. This exquisite monument is minor in size but has served as an expression of Corinthian elegance in exterior and interior applications throughout the United States and Europe. The monument, one of the most delightful remains of Hellenistic antiquity, was initially built as a monumental base to support a now-lost bronze tripod won by a young man as the trophy for a musical competition in 334 B.C. His proud parents exalted this victory by constructing a blue-marble structure from Mount Hymetos not only to raise the bronze tripod on a pedestal, but to create a lasting architectural icon. The square base supports a cylindrical tower surrounded by six columns of white marble from Mount Penteli, the same marble used in the Parthenon. The number of columns is divided in half to culminate in a three-pronged finial covered with intertwining acanthus leaves and stalks that provided the rests for the tripod.

Past Laureates

2016       Scott Merrill

2015       David M. Schwarz

2014       Pier Carlo Bontempi

2013       Thomas H. Beeby

2012       Michael Graves

2011       Robert A.M. Stern

2010       Rafael Manzano Martos

2009       Abdel-Wahed El-Wakil

2008       Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk

2007       Jaquelin T. Robertson

2006       Allan Greenberg

2005       Quinlan Terry

2004       Demetri Porphyrios

2003       Léon Krier