2013 AIA Gold Medal Awarded to Thom Mayne

The AIA Gold Medal, voted on annually, is considered to be the profession’s highest honor that an individual can receive. The Gold Medal honors an individual whose significant body of work has had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture. Mayne will be honored at a special event in March in Washington, D.C. as well as at the 2013 AIA National Convention in Denver.

Mayne’s commitment to architecture as a journey and not as a destination is evidenced through the forms and materials of his buildings, his personal and professional life, and the name of his firm, Morphosis, which was founded in Los Angeles in 1972. In his own life, he’s evolved from a rugged iconoclast to a collaborative government works mainstay.

In the same year he formed Morphosis, Mayne and several colleagues founded the Southern California Institute of Architects, or SCI-Arc. Since then, Mayne has had a long record of academic involvement, which has helped to spread his enthusiasm for experimentally pushing architecture’s role in society further into the cultural forefront among decades of students.