American Institute of Architects awards 2013 AIA Gold Medal to Thom Mayne

Los Angeles-based architect Thom Mayne has been awarded the 2013 AIA Gold Medal, one of the highest honors in the profession.

The American Institute of Architects' board of directors awarded the 2013 AIA Gold Medal to Thom Mayne noting "his palette of bold angular forms, exposed structural elements, and double-skin veils that play on notions of dynamic transparency have become trendsetting motifs in a growing number of governmental and institutional projects. Furthermore, his commitment to egalitarian lo-fi materials and sustainable practices, and his prescient awareness of how social interaction shapes users' lives, all illustrate his commitment to architecture as a socially progressive art."

The annual award, the highest given out by the institute, recognizes an architect for a body of work that has had "a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture."

Thom Mayne, educated at University of South California and Harvard University Graduate School of Design, founded his firm, Morphosis, in Los Angeles in 1972.

His most famous projects include the University of Toronto Graduate House (2000), the Caltrans District 7 Headquarters in Los Angeles (2004), the Morse Courthouse in Eugene, Oregon (2006) and the Cooper Union in New York (2009.)

Mayne received the international Pritzker Architecture Prize (often referred to as the Nobel Prize of architecture) in 2005.

Mayne is the 69th AIA Gold Medalist. Past recipients of the AIA Gold Medal include Frank Lloyd Wright (1949), Frank Gehry (1999), Michael Graves (2001) and Steven Holl (2012).

Mayne will be honored at a special event in March in Washington as well as at the 2013 AIA National Convention in Denver.

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American Institute of Architects awards 2013 AIA Gold Medal to Thom Mayne