The winner of the 2013 Royal Institute of British Architects' highest honor was not easy to choose. It would seem that Zumthor, the Pritzker Prize-winning and Premium Imperiale guru of "alternative" architecture, is more than obvious. But, according to RIBA President Angela Brady, all six applicants were equally well-deserved practitioners and theorists, so the decision was not easy. However, the huge influence on the professional community enjoyed by the Swiss architect ultimately tilted the jury's opinion in his favor.
The ceremony of awarding the Gold Medal will take place on February 6, 2013, at the same time new foreign members of the Institute will receive certificates of admission to RIBA. Among them are Russian architects Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin, Norwegians Jan Olav Jensen and Burre Skodvin, Carme Pinos from Barcelona.
It is important to note that the candidacy of each "gold medalist" is approved by the head of the British state. In the case of Zumthor, this is Elizabeth II, the first in this role was Queen Victoria: the medal has been awarded since 1848.
Since then, this honor has been conferred on F. L. Wright (1941), Victor Vesnin (1945), Le Corbusier (1953), Auguste Perret (1948), Walter Gropius (1956), Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1959), Pierre Luigi Nervi (1960). By the end of the 20th century, with the appearance of the Pritzker Prize and the Premium Imperiale, the award lost its international primacy, and the list of "medalists" began to duplicate the lists of winners of other major awards.
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