Today, the National Building Museum (NBM) announced landscape architect Elizabeth K. Meyer as the 19th recipient of the Vincent Scully Prize. Meyer is the Merill D. Peterson professor of landscape architecture at the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Architecture, in Charlottesville, Va. Inaugurated in 1999, the Vincent Scully Prize recognizes "exemplary practice, scholarship, or criticism in architecture, historic preservation, and urban design," in honor of the late American art historian and Yale University professor Vincent Scully, according to the NBM's press release.
Since its inception, the annual prize has been awarded to architects Robert A.M. Stern, FAIA, Robert Venturi, and Denise Scott Brown, Hon. FAIA. Last year, architecture critics Robert Campbell and Inga Saffron shared the honor.
“This prize is such an unexpected and meaningful honor,” Meyer said in a press release. “I admire so many of its former recipients for their substantial contributions to the built environment. Like Vincent Scully, I care deeply about the role of history and theory in design education.”
A graduate of both UVA and Cornell University, Meyer has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and is the founding director of the cross-disciplinary UVA Center for Cultural Landscapes. She has garnered awards for her research from the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, the American Society of Landscape Architects, Dumbarton Oaks Research Center, the Graham Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts and Mellon Foundation. In 2012, President Barack Obama appointed her to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. She is currently writing a book, The Margins of Modernity: Practices of Modern Landscape Architecture.
"Landscape architect, theorist, historian, university professor, and former dean, Elizabeth Meyer embodies the very spirit of Vincent Scully as a master lecturer who inspired generations of practitioners,” said jury chair Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, FAIA, in the same release. “Integrating research and writing with professional, administrative and civic responsibilities, Meyer has produced an influential body of theory, interpretation and criticism, on landscape topics related to aesthetics, sustainability, culture, and social impact.”
Meyer will be recognized in an awards program on Oct. 30 at the NBM, in Washington, D.C., where she will offer remarks on landscape architecture and public space design with Dumbarton Oaks Research Center program director Thaisa Way.
