Today, the University of Notre Dame announced that Vero Beach, Fla.–based Merrill, Pastor & Colgan Architects founder Scott Merrill, AIA, will receive the Richard H. Driehaus Prize for his ability to design classical architecture that expresses regional identities. Merrill will receive a $200,000 prize and a bronze miniature of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens, Greece—known as the first use of the Corinthian Order on the outside of a building—during a ceremony on March 19 in Chicago.
Established in 2003 by Chicago-based Driehaus Capital Management founder, chairman, and chief investment officer Richard H. Driehaus, the prize is awarded to a living architect whose work exemplifies the values of traditional and classical architecture in a contemporary built environment, and creates a positive cultural, environmental, and artistic impact.
“Scott Merrill has demonstrated how the principles of classicism can be used as a foundation for designing buildings that respond to and express regional character while employing the richness of precedents found throughout the ages, including our own,” Michael Lykoudis, the Francis and Kathleen Rooney Dean of Notre Dame’s architecture school, said in a press release. “His applications of architectural forms from various times and places to modern settings are used to reinforce the values of community, beauty and sustainability without sacrificing economy.”
Recent Richard H. Driehaus Prize laureates include David Schwarz, AIA, (2015); Pier Carlo Bontempi (2014); and Thomas H. Beeby, FAIA, (2013).
In conjunction with the Richard H. Driehaus Prize, the University of Notre Dame also announced that Eusebio Leal Spengler, city historian of Havana, will receive the $50,000 Henry Hope Reed Award. The annual prize recognizes an individual working outside the practice of architecture who has supported the advancement of the traditional city through architecture and art. Spengler, who specializes in archaeological sciences, is the director of the restoration program of Old Havana and its historic center, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Recent Henry Hope Reed Award winners include Dr. Richard Joseph Jackson, Hon. AIA (2015); Ruan Yisan (2014); and David Watkin (2013).
This year's jury for both prizes consisted of Adele Chatfield-Taylor, president emerita of the American Academy in Rome; Robert Davis, developer and founder of Seaside, Fla.; Paul Goldberger, Hon. AIA, Vanity Fair contributing editor; Léon Krier, architect and urban planner; Demetri Porphyrios, principal of Porphyrios Associates; and Witold Rybczynski, Hon. FAIA, ARCHITECT contributor and Meyerson Professor Emeritus of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania.
