The Architectural League of New York » Special Events

President’s Medal 2012:Amanda Burden

Gabriel Silberblatt — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 18:27:09 +0000

2012 President’s Medal
Amanda Burden

On April 9, 2012 the Architectural League of New York presented its President’s Medal to Amanda Burden, Chair of the New York City Planning Commission and Director of the Department of City Planning. The President’s Medal is the Architectural League’s highest honor and is bestowed, at the discretion of the League’s President and Board of Directors, on individuals to recognize an extraordinary body of work in architecture, urbanism, or design.

Recent recipients of the President’s Medal have included Massimo and Lella Vignelli, Hugh Hardy, Richard Meier, Ada Louise Huxtable, Robert A.M. Stern, Kenneth Frampton, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, and Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.

Additional photographs from the event are forthcoming.

In presenting the award, Architectural League President Annabelle Selldorf read the following citation:

Amanda Burden’s New York is a world of intense and sociable street life—and of the solitary pleasures of places designed for contemplation and respite. Amanda Burden’s New York vibrates with the dynamism of a world capital—and offers direct connection to the natural world of plants and weather and water. Her vision encompasses the largest scale and the most intimate: she is leading the reimagining of the city’s 520-mile-long waterfront, and she knows that how the edge of a bench touches the back of a knee can determine the success of a public space. Amanda Burden has creatively and effectively used zoning as a tool to shape the city’s future and to protect the valued essence of its past and present.

For her deep commitment to the public realm; for her passion for design and architecture; for her remarkable accomplishments in raising both the quality of design in our city and our expectations about design and city life; for her love of New York in all its variety and complexity: the Architectural League presents its President’s Medal to Amanda M. Burden. As a planner and as a public servant, she has made a profound and lasting contribution to making New York a more vibrant, more humane, more beautiful city.

About Amanda Burden
Amanda Burden, FAICP, Hon. AIA, received her Master’s Degree in Urban Planning from Columbia University. She was appointed by Mayor Bloomberg in 2002 as Director of the Department of City Planning and Chair of the New York City Planning Commission. She also served as a member of the Commission from 1990-2002. From 1983 to 1990, she was Vice President for Planning and Design of the Battery Park City Authority, and from 1997 to 2000 was Director of Planning for the Center for Court Innovation. Amanda Burden served on the Architectural League’s Board of Directors from 1983 to 2002.

Beaux Arts Ball 2011: Transport

Gregory Wessner — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 17:32:40 +0000

Click here to see pictures of this year’s party and Benefactors Dinner.

Beaux Arts Ball 2011: Transport
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Brooklyn Army Terminal
140 58th Street
Brooklyn, New York

Environment by
Leong Leong with Jiminie Ha

Music by
A R P and Jon Santos

A benefit for the programs of the Architectural League

Click here to see the 2011 Benefit Committee.
Click here to see pictures from previous years.

About the Brooklyn Army Terminal
Designed by Cass Gilbert (one of the founders in 1881 of the Architectural League) the Brooklyn Army Terminal opened in September 1919 and was the largest military supply base in the United States through World War II. Set on 95 acres on the waterfront in Sunset Park, the complex of buildings was built using girderless steel-reinforced concrete slabs. At the time of its construction, its system of 96 centrally-controlled elevators was the largest of its kind in the country. The atrium, a soaring volume of 4 million cubic feet bisected by railroad tracks that carried soldiers in and out of the building, is lined with staggered concrete balconies from which supplies were loaded and unloaded by mobile cranes that ran along the roofline. The Brooklyn Army Terminal reached the pinnacle of its fame in 1958 when Elvis Presley was deployed to Germany from there, an event that attracted thousands of fans and photojournalists. In 1981, the City of New York bought the Brooklyn Army Terminal from the federal government. Today it is home to a diverse mix of high tech, cultural, and financial services companies.

Image: Brooklyn Army Terminal as photographed in October 1949 by Andreas Feininger. (Courtesy of Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

BEAUX ARTS BALL 2011
CO-CHAIRS
Stella Betts and David Leven
Astrid Lipka and Lyn Rice

CORPORATE SPONSOR COMMITTEE
Joseph Mizzi, Chair
Ken D’Amato
Christine Flaherty
Denzil Gallagher
Laura Guzman
Elisa Orlanski Ours
David Pfeffer
Marc Simmons
Mimi Taft

The Architectural League gratefully acknowledges the
corporate sponsors of the 2011 Beaux Arts Ball

SUSTAINER
RFR Holding LLC

PATRONS
Angelo Gordon & Co./Belvedere Capital/Myles Horn
Buro Happold
Miele
Molteni&C Dada
RD Rice Construction
Sciame Construction
Tarter Krinsky & Drogin LLP
Waterworks
Zubatkin Owner Representation

ADVOCATES
Arup
Belden Tri-State Building Materials
Front Inc.
Microdesk
Nicholson and Galloway Inc.
The Par Group
Poliform
Port Morris Tile and Marble
STV
Villeroy & Boch
W&W Glass LLC
WB Wood
Walsh Glass & Metal

List in formation.

For information about corporate sponsorship opportunities, please contact Kathryn Slocum, at 212-753-1722, ext. 21 or email slocum@archleague.org.

Wine generously donated by

Lighting by

President’s Medal 2011:Massimo and Lella Vignelli

Gregory Wessner — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 20:15:34 +0000

President’s Medal
Massimo and Lella Vignelli

The President’s Medal of the Architectural League is presented to recognize extraordinary contributions to architecture and design.

Massimo and Lella Vignelli are awarded the 2011 President’s Medal in recognition of a body of work so influential that it has shaped the very way we see the world, and so perfectly conceived and executed in its specifics that each encounter with a Vignelli object or book or sign or space is a moment of delight. The integrity and consistency of Massimo and Lella Vignelli’s work, their commitment to the essential, the timeless, the rational, and the beautiful, inspires now and will continue to inspire long into the future.

Recent recipients are Amanda Burden, Hugh Hardy, Richard Meier, Ada Louise Huxtable, Kenneth Frampton, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, Robert A.M. Stern, and Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.

Remarks by Architectural League President Annabelle Selldorf on presenting the President’s Medal to Lella and Massimo Vignelli on March 18, 2011:

“As President of the Architectural League of New York, I am especially happy to award Massimo and Lella Vignelli with the President’s Medal. We bestow it in recognition of their design work executed for more than 45 years in the U.S. In deference to our honorees, I will be brief. I will speak, I hope, as they design, in a modernist, minimal, seemingly effortless manner. I will talk sans serif.

“The Vignelli’s career has been devoted to demonstrating that design and architecture are integrated endeavors. They have shown that graphics, industrial design, interior design , furniture, clothing, jewelry and architecture are all one collective enterprise. Their contributions to design in the U.S. began when they arrived in New York in the mid-1960s. One wouldn’t presume to say that America in those days was a backwater of design. But let’s say it lacked the Vignelli approach: modernismo and sprezzatura (that is, craft without visible effort). They displayed it first in their work for Unimark, and then when they opened their own New York office in 1971.

“Both Massimo and Lella were trained as architects—he at the Milan Polytechnic and the School of Architecture at the University of Venice— and Lella at the School of Architecture at the University of Venice. As trained architects who were committed to industrial, graphic, and product design, they knew that these disciplines should not be split. Before the computer took over, they realized that the tendency to stay in one’s discipline led to over-specialization. They crossed “platforms” before that term became bandied about in the digital age. The Vignellis taught architects how to see, communicate— and made them want to read— by working with such disparate entities as the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (from the late 1960s to the early 1980s) and Architectural Record (in the 1980s and 1990s).

“The two have stood for design created with function and clarity, purity and punch. A complete testament to their work opened last fall— a building they Vignellis designed at the Rochester Institute of Technology, which contains their archives. Appropriately, it is called the Vignelli Center for Design Studies. From this body of work future generations of designers can learn the Vignelli principles of consistency, order, rationality and harmony, all done with panache. We at the Architectural League salute Massimo and Lella Vignelli.”

Beaux Arts Ball 2010: Unseen Worlds

admin — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 20:30:36 +0000

Click here to see the photos of the party on Flickr.
Click here to see a series of light paintings done at the party by Jeff McCrum.

Saturday, September 25, 2010
The American Academy of Arts and Letters
Broadway between 155th and 156th Streets
Washington Heights, New York

Beaux Arts Ball Co-chairs
Amale Andraos and Dan Wood
Eve Klein and Robert Owens
Kate Orff and Oded Horodniceanu

The Architectural League gratefully acknowledges League staff members Reid Bingham and Sarah Snider for producing this year’s Beaux Arts Ball.

Video, light, and interactive installations by
Jeanne Angel
Gerardo Cid
Ghosh
Ingo Günther
In Process Out
Jason Krugman
Geoff Matters
NO CARRIER
The Vandalights

Technical Support: Brendan Byrne
Music: DJ Chris Annibell/Afrokinetic
Catering: Robbins/Wolfe

Nine different artists and design teams created video projects and interactive installations that transformed the galleries and Terrace of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Volunteers: Jamie Bekker, Emily Danzinger-Willemson, Kate Cahill, Claire Tokunaga, Carly Liebman, Conner Garrison, Caroline Golum, Cequyna Moore, Lorraine Cheng, Ivan Safrin, Purva Jain, Christine Dennett, Leisa Jamison, Tamara Linde, Caroline Stover, Linda Campbell, Melissa Constantine, William Martin, Ashleigh Baber, Meredith Baber, and Steve MacFarlane

The Architectural League would also like to thank the following for their help in making the evening possible: Dr. Victor Alicea, Nicholas Anderson, Mitchell Codding, Virginia Dajani, Steve Ecker, Kathy Kienholz, Anne Rieselbach, Cassim Shepard, Varick Shute, Cody Upton, and Gregory Wessner.

About the American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is an honor society of 250 architects, composers, artists, and writers. The honor of election is considered the highest formal recognition of artistic merit in the United States. The Academy is headquartered in three beaux arts granite and limestone buildings, designed by McKim Mead & White, Cass Gilbert, and Charles Pratt Huntington, that are part of the Audubon Terrace Historic District in upper Manhattan.

Thumbnail photo: Lighting painting by Jeff McCrum

Beaux Arts Ball 2010

admin — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 14:45:07 +0000

SOLD OUT.
Tickets are no longer available for the Beaux Arts Ball.
We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

The Architectural League of New York
Beaux Arts Ball 2010 Unseen Worlds
Saturday, September 25, 2010
9 pm to 12 midnight
American Academy of Arts and Letters
Broadway between 155th and 156th
New York City
add to calendar

Music by
Chris Annibell/Afrokinetic

Light and interactive installations by
Jeanne Angel
Gerardo Cid
Ghosh
Ingo Günther
In Process Out
Jason Krugman
Geoff Matters
NO CARRIER
The Vandalights

Drinks and light fare
Festive attire

Tickets $75
Patron tickets $150

To purchase tickets, click here. Tickets are no longer available.

To view photos from past Balls, click here.

You may call 212-753-1722, ext. 10, if you have any questions.

Beaux Arts Ball 2010 Co-chairs
Amale Andraos and Dan Wood
Eve Klein and Bob Owens
Kate Orff and Oded Horodniceanu

Patrons
Robert A.M. Stern Architects
Rogers Marvel Architects
SHoP Architects
Tsao & McKown Architects

Benefit Committee
1100 Architect
Maria Alataris and Vishaan Chakrabarti
Archi-Tectonics
ARUP
Carmi Bee
Stella Betts and David Leven
Sara Caples and Everardo Jefferson
Stephen Cassell
Arthur Cohen
Yolande Daniels and Sunil Bald
Kenneth Drucker, HOK
Ennead Architects
FXFOWLE Architects
Gauthier Architects
Rosalie Genevro and Armand LeGardeur
Lisa Green and Bill Dacey
H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture
Mimi Hoang and Eric Bunge, nArchitects
Interboro
Ken Smith Landscape Architect
Lauren Kogod and David Smiley
Dorothy Kresz and Michael Bierut
Jamie Maslyn Larson, West 8
Jill Leckner and Jeffrey Johnson
Jennifer Lee and Pablo Castro
Lerival
Leroy Street Studio
Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis Architects
Eric Liftin
Lyn Rice Architects
Alice Chung and Casey Mack
Marble Fairbanks
Matilda McQuaid and Craig Konyk
Menaker & Herrmann LLP
Joseph Mizzi
Andrea Monfried and Mike Harshman
Toshiko Mori Architect
Murphy Burnham Buttrick Architects
Jeannie and Tom Phifer
Charles Renfro
Anne Rieselbach and Grant Marani
Mark Robbins and Brett Seamans
Robert Silman Associates
Susan Rodriguez and Charles Lowrey
Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith
Joel Sanders
Selldorf Architects
Susan Sellers and Michael Rock
Hayes Slade and James Slade
Snøhetta
Mimi Taft and Frank Lupo
Ali Tayar
Suzan and Robert Tillotson
Ana Maria Torres
Billie Tsien and Tod Williams
Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi
Claire Weisz and Mark Yoes
Adam Yarinsky

Invitation designed by Pentagram.

President’s Medal 2010: Hugh Hardy

Gregory Wessner — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 20:51:05 +0000

President’s Medal
Hugh Hardy

The President’s Medal of the Architectural League is presented to recognize extraordinary contributions to architecture and design. Recent recipients are Amanda Burden, Richard Meier, Ada Louise Huxtable, Massimo and Lella Vignelli, Kenneth Frampton, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, Robert A.M. Stern, and Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.

On April 29, 2010, the President’s Medal was presented to Hugh Hardy at a dinner in his honor at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, an institution for which Hugh has long been affiliated as its architect. The evening began with cocktails and tours of the BAM Harvey Theater, followed by dinner and remarks in the Lepercq Space in BAM’s main building.

Remarks by League President Calvin Tsao upon presentation of the medal to Hugh Hardy:

“We are gathered together this evening to celebrate someone who is near and dear to our hearts and to the civic heart of this city. In fact, the story of Hugh Hardy’s career as an architect is so closely intertwined with the cultural landscape of New York over the past forty years that his presence is felt in virtually every significant arts institution around the city. Of course, here tonight, in this magnificent space, but also in so many other places that are vital to our cultural life. It’s not hyperbole to say that much of what we love best about New York’s architectural survival and revival since the 1970s has benefited from Hugh’s touch. There’s The Harvey, of course, and the Dance Theater of Harlem, the Joyce Theater, the New Victory Theater, the New Amsterdam Theater, Radio City Music Hall, the Rainbow Room, Bryant Park and the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, and, well, I could go on and on and on. The evening is not nearly long enough for me to list his many projects just in New York much less around the country.

“Like so many of this city’s proudest inhabitants and fiercest protectors, Hugh wasn’t born here but came here by absolute necessity—and in the end it turns out that the city has needed him just as much, if not more, than he needed the city. Hugh was born in Mallorca, Spain and grew up not far from here, in Tarrytown. He has said that his infatuation with New York City can be traced to “that tender age when I used to sit alone in the balcony of just about every theater in Times Square watching second-run movies.”Stage struck, one of Hugh’s first jobs after serving in the engineering corps of the United States Navy, was to work for the celebrated set designer Jo Mielziner. Hugh claims he got the job working for his boyhood hero by pestering him. Knowing Hugh, I don’t think there was much pestering involved. I’m sure Mielziner just took one look at Hugh’s firmly planted feet, steady blue-eyed gaze and ear-to-ear grin and realized that he had no choice but to hire him. Under Mielziner’s tutelage, Hugh did such things as paint a hotel room set for the original production of “Gypsy”—something that anyone like me who also came to architecture from a love of theater would kill to have on their resume.

“Not surprisingly, it was Mielziner who introduced Hugh to his second cultural hero and next mentor, Eero Saarinen when Mielziner and Saarinen began working together on the design of the Vivian Beaumont Theater. This encounter with Saarinen put Hugh firmly on the path of architecture and he hasn’t looked back since. But it’s important to note that Hugh never actually gave up the theater, he just got out of the theater to become its biggest champion by saving old venues or creating new ones or reimagining public parks as performance spaces of an entirely different scale. And I don’t mean to give you the impression that Hugh is only comfortable off stage; word has it that he’s got quite a way with show tunes and he could even have a viable third career as a cabaret singer.

“In his profile of Hugh in The New Yorker, Brendan Gill compared his subject to another one of this city’s greatest architectural citizens, Stanford White, saying that ‘White and Hardy may be said to have achieved their professional reputations by dint of exceptional charm and energy—the matter of their talent having been accepted at the beginning of their careers as something more or less beyond challenge.’ While it’s heady for any architect to be compared to the incomparable Mr. White and to have his architectural legacy measured alongside that of White’s, let’s for a second focus on that “exceptional charm and energy” bit because those are two traits Hugh has in such abundance that he could only have been born with them. As Gill pointed out, that charm of Hugh’s is anything but superficial as it’s discernible in his work. There’s no signature style to speak of rather a signature playfulness, erudition, and willingness to take risks. What Gill called Hugh’s ‘inveterately boyish demeanor,’ is a quality that is as visible today as when Gill wrote his piece in 1996, and probably what accounts for the freshness of his work. For him, architecture is, mostly simply put, where life happens and life is, after all, grand.

“Architecture is not a profession for those who tire easily and it’s the virtues of patience and persistence that they don’t teach you in school but that often make the difference between success and total frustration. Somehow Hugh embodies all these qualities with an effortlessness that belies that incredible focus required to marshal the many forces necessary to succeed in the public realm. For those of us who are his colleagues in the profession and have been recipients of his advice or behind the scenes help at a critical juncture, we know that his aura of effortlessness is matched only by his generosity of spirit. It’s clear that his work as an architect doesn’t stop at his desk; in fact he brings his customary cheerfulness, refreshing common sense, boundless enthusiasm, and considerable influence in support of projects by other architects as an unofficial, yet equally tireless, advocate for what he believes is right and good, even if it’s not designed by him.

“And so it is that Hugh has become to us at the Architectural League as much of a landmark as those many treasures he has resuscitated, reinterpreted and re-imagined. ‘Architecture is no more than making conscious choices,’ Hugh has said, with typical understatement, of his chosen field. If that’s the case, then tonight we celebrate one of Hugh’s best conscious choices: becoming an architect. We award this President’s Medal, our highest honor, to our very own Mr. New York who I encourage to take a well-deserved bow. But there’s more to come, of that I’m sure. Tomorrow he’ll be back at work coaxing new life and more dollars into one more against-all-odds project. With Hugh the show always must go on and any of his performance is one that shouldn’t be missed.”

Beaux Arts Ball 2009: Manufacture

Gregory Wessner — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 14:07:52 +0000

Saturday, June 6, 2009
The Old American Can Factory
232 Third Street at Third Avenue
Gowanus, Brooklyn

Beaux Arts Ball Co-chairs
Andrew and Nicole Bernheimer
Jared and Carolina Della Valle
Granger Moorhead and Penelope Hardy
Robert Moorhead and Maggie Wright

Produced in collaboration with XØ Projects Inc.
Food by Lisa Sigal + Hot Bread Kitchen, The Dosa Man, Blue Marble Ice Cream
Music by DJ Chris Annibell/Afrokinetic
Video by Josh Goldberg, Adam Kendall, Moey Inc.
Lighting by Wingspace

Follow the links to check out photos from the party and Benefactors Dinner on Flickr.

Artisans, fabricators, artists, designers, filmmakers, publishers and non-profit organizations from the more than 200 creative producers at The (OA) Can Factory opened their studios throughout the complex during the course of the event. A temporary collaborative creation space called The Factory was fitted out with machinery, materials and expert manufacturers for building, binding, stitching and printing.

For a list of the people and organizations that collaborated with us, click here. To view the Benefit Committee, click here.

President’s Medal 2009:Richard Meier

Gabriel Silberblatt — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 20:50:24 +0000

President’s Medal
Richard Meier

On February 9, 2009 the Architectural League of New York presented its President’s Medal to architect Richard Meier. The President’s Medal is the Architectural League’s highest honor and is bestowed, at the discretion of the League’s President and Board of Directors, on individuals to recognize an extraordinary body of work in architecture, urbanism, or design.

Recent recipients of the President’s Medal have included Amanda Burden, Massimo and Lella Vignelli, Hugh Hardy, Ada Louise Huxtable, Robert A.M. Stern, Kenneth Frampton, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, and Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.
In presenting the award, Architectural League President Calvin Tsao read the following citation:

The Architectural League awards its President’s Medal to Richard Meier in recognition of a remarkable body of work in which he has created, refined, and extended a rigorous architectural language that elevates the act of building and, thereby, the human activities that occur in the spaces he creates. “Architecture is vital and enduring because it contains us,” he has written in describing his design philosophy; “it substantiates the space we exist in, move through, and use. My work is an effort to redefine and refine this ongoing human order, to interpret the relationship between what has been and what can be, to extract from our culture both the timeless and the topical.

Beaux Arts Ball 2008: Playtime

Varick Shute — Sat, 17 May 2008 17:44:55 +0000

May 17, 2008
275 Hudson Street

Co-Chairs
Kim Yao and Paul Lewis
Carmen Lenzi and Marc Tsurumaki
Alice Min Soo Chun and David J. Lewis

Environment by Leven Betts Studio, Lyn Rice Architects, and OBRA Architects

Click the image above to see pictures from this event.

President’s Medal 2008:Ada Louise Huxtable

Gregory Wessner — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 20:02:23 +0000

President’s Medal
Ada Louise Huxtable

On February 5, 2008 the Architectural League of New York presented its President’s Medal to Ada Louise Huxtable.The President’s Medal is the Architectural League’s highest honor and is bestowed, at the discretion of the League’s President and Board of Directors, on individuals to recognize an extraordinary body of work in architecture, urbanism, or design. Recent recipients of the President’s Medal have included Amanda Burden, Massimo and Lella Vignelli, Hugh Hardy, Richard Meier, Robert A.M. Stern, Kenneth Frampton, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, and Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.

Remarks by League President Calvin Tsao on presenting the medal:

“We are honored to have among us this evening many of the world’s most celebrated architects—architects who have remade our skylines and enriched our lives with sublime testaments of human creativity. Yet, despite the impact of these substantial talents, there is one person here tonight who, more than anyone else, has helped shape the public’s awareness of architecture’s importance in our daily lives and its fundamental significance as part of our cultural heritage. Someone who has challenged, cajoled, instructed, humored, shamed, inspired and, yes, even, scared architects, clients, and civic leaders into accepting the awesome responsibility of our built environment. That person is, of course, Ada Louise Huxtable.

“Ada Louise Huxtable exemplifies the critic as critical thinker: She gives us disciplined intellectual insight that combines deep historical knowledge and a command of all relevant facts, with balanced yet passionate judgment and, when necessary, a tongue planted firmly in cheek. She has the sweetest smile, the most gracious manners, but, make no mistake, this lady is fierce. When she is disappointed by a work of architecture or an approach to a planning issue, we know it. She speaks to us from a position of authority, but she never speaks down to us. Those who have spoken before me tonight have quoted a few of her more memorable zingers—I would like to treat you to a couple more:

An excellent job with a dubious undertaking, which is like saying it would be great if it weren’t awful. (It’s worth noting that this project didn’t go ahead.)

The result is a pitiful compendium of watered-down mannerisms…if there is any achievement here, it is in making the bland grotesque.

“Writing about the Whitney Museum when it first opened in 1966, Ada Louise acknowledged that it was, at that moment, undoubtedly, ‘the most disliked building in New York.’ But her own reaction to the building evolved over time, a process, she said, is ‘Like that fine old saying about sin, first the Whitney repulses, then it intrigues, and finally, it is embraced.’

“Of her chosen subject, Ada Louise has said that ‘architecture is the art that absolutely cannot be avoided, [the art] that expresses everything that any civilization creates or leaves behind it.’ But if architecture is at the center of what she writes about, it is hardly her only subject. For her, writing about architecture is writing about life.

“As Ada Louise has shown us, architecture is not just about aesthetics, though aesthetics matter enormously. It is about zoning laws and building regulations and city planners. It’s about clients and their money and the influence behind that money. Architecture is about how and why certain projects are built and certain ones aren’t. It’s about how buildings are made. It’s not just about excitement for the new, though the new inspires and expands us; it is also about respect for the best of the old. Ada Louise has been the first to embrace challenging buildings that are much later widely acknowledged as masterpieces. She has also often been the first to sound the alarm when significant historic structures or districts are threatened. In many cases, she is what stood between the wrecking ball and some of our most precious architectural citizens.

“Architecture is the most public of the arts, and, ultimately, architecture is about values. As Ada Louise has written, ‘A building is not a studio work; it is the product of an enormous mixed bag of programs and pressures that go far beyond the unified vision that is possible for the creator, performer, interpreter or translator of other art forms. It is caught in an endless struggle between the aesthetic and the pragmatic on a battlefield of politics, money and power.’ And then later in the same piece: “In no field of aesthetic endeavor. . . does [the public] understand so little of what it loses because it understands so little.” Ada Louise writes to help us all understand, not only the meaning and effect of particular buildings and districts, but what is at stake in architecture and development and the way we build and then live in our cities.

This is an age sorely lack in heroes and to many of us here tonight, Ada Louise is a hero. Ada Louise is a hero in that very New York way: a hero who is, at once, one of us, but, also, by virtue of her sharp eye, deep knowledge of history, unfailing distaste for puffery, and many insights into both human accomplishment and frailty, makes us aspire to be our best selves.

A pioneer, a stalwart, a relentless provocateur, a tireless advocate for greatness, and an architecture-lover’s intellectual companion of a lifetime: For all this, it is my honor and privilege to present The Architectural League’s highest honor, the President’s Medal, to Ada Louise Huxtable.”