Two Pulitzer Prize–winning architecture critics, Robert Campbell, FAIA, and Inga Saffron, have been named this year's recipients of the Vincent Scully Prize, an annual jury-selected award given for excellence in architecture and design-related fields presented by the National Building Museum. The prize's namesake—and first honoree—died in December.
In the prize's nearly two-decade history, it has been given to other critics (Witold Rybczynski, Hon. FAIA, a frequent contributor to this magazine, is one), architects (Robert A.M. Stern, FAIA, the recently deceased Robert Venturi, and Denise Scott Brown, Hon. FAIA, for three), as well as others working in related fields. Landscape architect Laurie Olin, Hon. AIA, received last year's prize.
Campbell and Saffron are both newspaper architecture critics, he for the Boston Globe and she for the Philadelphia Inquirer—a crop of voices that is becoming an "endangered species." Another member of this club, Blair Kamin of the Chicago Tribune, will be moderating a discussion between the two prize winners at the National Building Museum on Oct. 29.
Wonderful news that the Vincent Scully Prize will go to two of our finest critics, Robert Campbell and Inga Saffron. A good year to make the point about how urgent it is that architecture criticism remain a vital presence in major daily newspapers—many of which are letting it go. https://t.co/idTe7uLYKq
— Paul Goldberger (@paulgoldberger) September 26, 2018
