Just Rewards: Denise Scott Brown Wins Jane Drew Prize for Women in Architecture

Women in architecture, rejoice! The “Grandmother of Architecture” Denise Scott Brown is finally getting the recognition she deserves at a time when equality and the gender pay gap is a hot topic in the architectural profession and beyond. While the start of 2017 has seen women making major statements across the board, Scott Brown has long been at the forefront of feminism; the leading lady of postmodernist design has been raising her voice for decades. Now, people are beginning to listen up.

Yesterday, The Architects’ Journal and The Architectural Review awarded Scott Brown with this year’s Jane Drew Prize for Women in Architecture. The news comes four years after the famed architect spoke out about her lack of recognition from the Pritzker Prize committee, who awarded her husband, Robert Venturi, in 1991 without noting her contribution to their combined practice.

At the time, she had been a partner at their firm, Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, for 22 years and co-authored the influential book, Learning From Las Vegas, solidifying their status as leading theorists in postmodernism.

In 2013, Scott Brown called for the Pritzker committee — which traditionally gives the prize to solo architects (with a few exceptions) — to “salute the notion of joint creativity.” She also asked women architects to embrace their “feminist awareness” and acknowledge the ongoing fight against the glass ceiling in the profession.

After her speech, Women in Design — a student organization at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design — put together a petition asking the Pritzker committee to include Scott Brown in Venturi’s prize. Even with 20,000 signatures from around the world, including Venturi himself and OMA founder Rem Koolhaas, the committee rejected the petition.

Though the Pritzker committee would not relent, last year Scott Brown and Venturi were jointly awarded the AIA Gold Medal after the organization changed its criteria to allow recognition of partners. In addition, the pair received the 2014 A+ Lifetime Achievement Award from Architizer.

Upon being nominated for the 2017 Jane Drew Prize, Scott Brown told the Architect’s Journal: “I’m a bit punch-drunk on the whole subject of prizes, as you can imagine, given my history with them.” Organizers say that her win was “a culmination of the grassroots drive to see her contribution to the profession adequately recognized.”

The Jane Drew Prize is named after the namesake architect whose work introduced the modern movement to Great Britain. In 2016, French architect and equality advocate Odile Decq received the prize. Previous winners include Grafton Architects’ founders Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, co-curators of the 2018 Venice Biennale, as well as Zaha Hadid, Kathryn Findlay and Eva Jiřičná.

Scott Brown will be honored alongside artist Rachel Whiteread, recipient of the 2017 Ada Louise Huxtable Prize, at the AJ/AR Women in Architecture Luncheon in London this March.

Images via Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates

For more on women who have powerfully impacted architectural history, read on.