The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, a global nonprofit for industry professionals and organizations that supports sustainable tall building design in urban environments, recently announced the winners of its 2023 lifetime achievement awards.
The CTBUH will recognize Carol Willis, the founder and director of the Skyscraper Museum in New York, with the Lynn S. Beedle Lifetime Achievement Award—an honor for professionals who have made “extraordinary contributions to the advancement of tall buildings and the urban environment,” according to a CTBUH press release. The organization will also bestow the Fazlur R. Khan Lifetime Achievement Award upon Patrick Bellew, the founding director of global environmental design and engineering consultancy firm Atelier Ten, for his technical design work on tall building projects.
“This year’s lifetime achievement awardees represent some of the most vibrant minds in the field of sustainable vertical urbanism,” Javier Quintana de Una, CTBUH CEO, said in the release. “Carol Willis has been a steadfast champion for the critical role high-rise buildings play in tackling population density in cities around the world, both today and historically. And there is perhaps no one more well-versed in the integration of environmental and building systems with architecture than Patrick Bellew.”
Willis and Bellew will be honored during a ceremony at the CTBUH’s annual international conference, which will be held later this year in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur from Oct. 16–21. Willis will open the event with a keynote presentation titled “Density Is Human by Definition: Key Issues and Vertical Solutions.” “All signs indicate that cities have been and will continue to be our collective future, so understanding density as an urban experience is key,” Willis said in the release. “‘Vertical density’ that embraces tall buildings and an expansive public realm—as a way to use land wisely and create healthful and equitable urban environments—is a humanistic goal that challenges all the professions united by [the] CTBUH.”
Bellew will deliver the event’s closing keynote presentation, “Living Environments: Building Systems Around Nature and High-Performance.” His talk will examine the importance of high-function urban projects such as Google’s upcoming headquarters in London and Singapore’s Jewel Changi Airport. “The natural world, the built environment, and the diverse people and communities that inhabit them need to be woven into the urban fabric like never before,” Bellew said in the release. “Only then can we really grapple with the complex issues confronting us as a society, from equity in housing to reducing carbon emissions to mitigating the impact of climate change.”
More information about the Lynn S. Beedle and Fazlur R. Khan Lifetime Achievement Awards, including past winners, can be found on the CTBUH’s website.
