The AIA and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture have chosen MIT Professor of Architecture Stanford Anderson the 2004 recipient of the Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education. The award honors an individual who has made outstanding contributions to architecture education for at least 10 years, and whose teaching has influenced a broad range of students and shaped the minds of those who will shape our environment. Anderson will receive the award at the 2004 AIA National Convention in Chicago in June.

Anderson founded MIT’s doctoral program, a curriculum widely respected and emulated for its integrity and intellectual rigor. Along with architectural historian Henry Millon, and art historians Wayne Andersen and Rosalind Krauss, Anderson created the advanced syllabus known as History, Theory, and Criticism of Art, Architecture, and Urban Form (HTC) more than 20 years ago. Consistently maintaining its standards of excellence, Anderson has directed the program while continuing to teach and advise students.

Model program for advanced degrees in architecture
In selecting him, the jury commented, “Stanford Anderson founded the PhD program at MIT, a program that much to his credit has maintained excellent stature through the years. We were incredibly impressed by the quality of the MIT department and its commitment to seeing architecture as a social art. Anderson has used that same commitment and focus as part of his discipline. He has made history and theory relevant to practice and education.” The 2004 Topaz Medallion jury consisted of Chair A. James Gersich, AIA, and Robert I. Selby, AIA, representing the AIA Board of Directors; Wayne Mortensen, representing the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS); and Ken Lambla, AIA, and Michael Stepner, FAIA, representing ACSA.

Anderson, now in his 41st year of teaching, will be serving his 13th as head of the HTC program. Students of Anderson’s doctoral program have broadly influenced architecture education by practicing, teaching, and governing all over the world. They include Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, London; Lawrence Speck, FAIA, former dean of MIT’s school of architecture and now at the University of Texas, Austin; Ann Beha, FAIA, Boston; and Hong-Bin Kang, first vice mayor of Seoul. Anderson has served as adviser or co-adviser for some 90 theses or dissertations.

Cultural framework
In his nominating letter, David Dixon, FAIA, president of the Boston Society of Architects writes, “Anderson has affected the very way that we think about thinking in architecture by shaping basic understandings about the importance and the roles of theory and history.”

Dixon further explains, “His approach to architecture envisions it as a world of inquiry and discipline. He believes that architecture participates in, indeed contributes to, the development of ideas that are continuous across cultures. If this seems conventional to us today, it is because the insight has been internalized by many in architecture, in main measure due to Anderson’s compelling writing, publishing, teaching, and lecturing.”

Anderson, as a Fulbright scholar, traveled in Europe to complete his dissertation research on Peter Behrens. Born in 1934 in Redwood Falls, Minn., he studied at St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minn., and the University of Minnesota. He dropped out of the university for a year to work as assistant clerk-of-the-works on a large construction project, namely Eero Saarinen’s Concordia Senior College in Fort Wayne, Ind., an experience he calls “an ideal practical immersion.” Anderson then moved to the University of California to complete his degree at Berkeley in the company of Vernon DeMars, Ezra Ehrenkrantz, Joe Esherick, Donald Olsen, and William Wurster. He went on to doctoral studies at Columbia University and then to Europe, retuning to the U.S. to teach at MIT.

In the jury’s congratulatory call, Anderson said he was “humbled by that fact that both organizations together—the AIA and ACSA—selected me for this honor.”

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