This highest award from the Royal Institute of British Architects has existed since the mid-19th century. Among those awarded in recent decades, there has been a significant preponderance in favor of foreign members of RIBA (for example, in 2009 and 2010, Alvaro Siza and J. M. Pei became its owners), therefore, the international status of the award allows it to argue in importance with the Pritzker Prize. In addition, unlike the latter, founded only in the late 1970s, the RIBA medal winner finds himself in the same "company" with Le Corbusier, F. L. Wright, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Alvar Aalto.
The awarding process is closed to the public, and the shortlist is not announced, but the jury made it clear to the press that Chipperfield's candidacy met with almost unanimous support: there was no “portfolio” equal to him in terms of quality (and the medal is awarded for a set of works) among the applicants.
The architect does not consider himself worthy of such a high award, at least not to date. He himself has for many years nominated historian and architectural theorist Joseph Rykwert for the Gold Medal and fears that he will never get it, like the now deceased Alison and Peter Smithsons. At the same time, he plans to use his laureate status to help young architects: in his opinion, it is much more difficult for them to break through in Britain than in other European countries.
Observers note that the awarding of the Gold Medal should compensate Chipperfield for the Sterling Prize, which was not received by his New Museum in Berlin (on October 2, 2010, it was awarded to the MAXXI Museum in Rome to Zaha Hadid), especially since the architect considers this work to be the main one in life.
The winner of the RIBA Gold Medal is officially confirmed by the Queen, and from her Chipperfield received the title of Knight in early 2010 (before that he was only Commander of the Order of the British Empire).
