2010 Henry Hope Reed laureate, Vincent Scully

 

Dear Friends:

 

I had the pleasure to join board chairman, Peter Pennoyer, and his predecessor, Anne Fairfax, along with Institute trustees, Gary Brewer, Adele Chatfield -Taylor (a long-time member of the Driehaus and Henry Hope Reed Prizes’ jury…) and Christine Franck at the 8^th annual Richard H. Driehaus Awards ceremony in Chicago last weekend. To learn more visit our Web site or make inquiry at Notre Dame School of Architecture, subject Driehaus Awards.

 

As the distinguished Henry Hope Reed laureate, Vincent Scully, was not able to attend, architect, educator and ICA&CA advisor, Robert A. M. Stern did so on his distinguished behalf as both student and Yale colleague. I am thus delighted to post the remarks from Professor Scully that Dean Stern graciously delivered. 

PWG

March 27, 2010  

I am deeply grateful for this award, and I sincerely regret not being able to be there to receive it in person.  I am especially moved by the fact that it is given in the name of Henry Hope Reed, with whom, as an unbearable young modernist, I used to disagree about everything some fifty years ago.  But it is I who have changed more than he.  It is true that my devotion to classical architecture, despite my love for Greek temples, will never be as pure, or exclusive, as his - and modernism too is in my bones.  Still, the horrors of the urban renewal of the 1960s made me realize how destructive of the city modernist planning and practice was and so set me on a course at least analogous to his own.  It is in that spirit that I gratefully accept, and am honored by, this Henry Hope Reed Award.

-Vincent Scully

 

Comments

[Curtis B Wayne, RA]

A beautiful sentiment, and a cautionary tale for us all, those of us in the most vital of all arts.
Curtis B Wayne, Architect