Hall's AIA 2012 Gold Medal was not only a confirmation of his role in American and world architecture, but also a response to his two most recent major projects: the Linked Hybrid residential complex in Beijing and the Vanke Center horizontal skyscraper in Shenzhen. They represent a response to the urban challenge of our time: they are both buildings and public spaces, their program is varied and rich. The boldness of a formal experiment, clearly manifested in these two works, is always softened by Hall's humanistic approach.
But more often this humanism is expressed in deeply lyrical structures that combine functionality with technological innovation. Their forms are closely related to the environment, but they never repeat it: Hall is more avant-garde than a supporter of tradition.
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the Loisium Winery Visitor Center in Austria, the new wing of the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, the Knut Hamsun Center in Norway, the Ocean and Surf Center in Biarritz. A sensitivity to context led to Hall's recent victory in a prestigious competition to design a new building for the Glasgow school, adjacent to C. R. McIntosh's masterpiece.
Dutchman Herman Hertzberger, recipient of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Gold Medal 2012, is also recognized for his humanistic creativity. He opened his workshop in 1960, and his
projects that allow people to use the space of their own accord have become for many an alternative to the rigid functionality of modernism. Herzberger was one of the first to use an “inner street” layout, combining office or classrooms.
The 79-year-old architect continues to work actively at the beginning of the 21st century: among his buildings are the CODA Museum in Apeldoorn (2004) and the building of the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences of the University of Utrecht (2011).
The credibility of Michael Graves, in contrast to his fellow laureates, is not so indisputable. His work can be called the quintessence of postmodernism in architecture and design, and the recent "reappraisal of values" caused by the "retrospective" of this style in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, only confirmed the generally negative attitude towards his work in the professional environment. But, obviously, this does not apply to traditionalists: the American Driehaus Prize is awarded by architects of precisely such views. Its jury noted Graves' attention to the function of the future building, its context, client needs, cultural tradition, as well as the diversity of his portfolio (from tableware design to urban planning projects) and his personal contribution to the popularization of the architectural profession and the role of quality “design” in everyday life.
It should be noted that, in addition to the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Notre Dame (Indiana), the organizer of the Driehaus Prize, the compilers of the National Register of Historic Places of the United States also see value in the work of Graves, which includes all fairly significant monuments of architecture and history. on the territory of the country. The renovation included the Portland Building in Portland, Oregon, a 1982 Graves building so characteristic of its time that a rare textbook on the history of architecture dispenses with its photograph.
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