Rybczynski Wins Eighth Vincent J. Scully Prize

Summary: The National Building Museum announced on September 11 that its distinguished panel of jurors chose architect, author, and educator Witold Rybczynski, Hon. FAIA, to receive the eighth Vincent J. Scully Prize, established in 1999 to recognize exemplary practice, scholarship, or criticism in architecture, historic preservation, and urban design. The award will be presented to Rybczynski at the museum on January 17, 2007.

Scholar and critic
Best known for his work as an architecture critic and essayist, Rybczynski has been described as “one of the most original, accessible, and stimulating writers on architecture” by Library Journal. He is the author of numerous acclaimed books enjoyed by architects and the general public alike, including:

• Home (1986), which has been translated into 10 languages
• The Most Beautiful House in the World (1989)
• City Life: Urban Expectations in a New World (1995)
• A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century (1999)
• The Look of Architecture (2000)
• Last Harvest (due out later this year).

Rybczynski contributes regularly on architecture and urbanism to the New York Review of Books, Atlantic, and The New Yorker and is an architecture critic for the on-line magazine Slate. He currently is the University of Pennsylvania School of Design’s Meyerson Professor of Urbanism. Among his numerous accolades, Rybczynski was appointed last year to serve on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, which advises on the design of public buildings, parks, and memorials in Washington, D.C. He was named an AIA Honorary Fellow in 1993 and received a Progressive Architecture Design Award two years earlier.

In distinguished company
The Scully Prize was instituted in honor of Vincent J. Scully, the Sterling Professor Emeritus of the history of art at Yale University and a distinguished visiting professor at the University of Miami. Past recipients include:

• Vincent J. Scully
• Jane Jacobs
• Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk
• Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown
• His Highness The Aga Khan
• His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales
• Phyllis Lambert.

Born in Edinburgh, Rybczynski was raised in London and attended Jesuit schools in England and Canada. He earned his BArch and MArch and later taught at McGill University in Montreal. Today, he lives in Philadelphia with his wife Shirley Hallam.