Today Sir John Soane’s Museum in London honored architect and planner Denise Scott Brown as the 2018 recipient of the Soane Medal, the second annual award given by the museum to an architect who has made a major contribution to the field through their built work, education, or theory.

Scott Brown’s award will be celebrated at a special public ceremony on Wednesday, October 17, at the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery, an extension she designed with her husband Robert Venturi in 1991. While Scott Brown will not be in attendance, the event will feature a lecture by the award winner, pre-recorded from her home in Philadelphia along with rarely seen photographs from the architect’s life and work. Sir David Chipperfield, Soane Medal juror and trustee of the museum, will issue a live response to Scott Brown’s message.

In a press release, Chipperfield noted that Scott Brown was the obvious choice out of the array of candidates the jury looked into. “Denise Scott Brown stood apart and was the jury’s unanimous choice. Scott Brown’s contribution across architecture, urbanism, theory, and education over the last fifty years has been profound and far-reaching,” he said. “Her example has been an inspiration to many, and we are delighted to honour her with the award of the Soane Medal.”

As one half of the revered firm Venturi Scott Brown, she’s created multiple master plans for projects around the world from the Département de la Haute-Garonne provincial capitol building in Toulouse, France, to the Mielparque resort in Kirifuri National Park in Japan. She’s also led highly-touted research projects, most notably Learning from Las Vegas, which turned into her’s and Venturi’s seminal book that helped usher in the postmodernist era in architecture.

The Soane Medal was established in memory of the museum’s founder, Sir John Soane, a 19^th-century, English, neo-classical architect. The museum is composed of his historic house, museum, and library that make up an “academy of architecture” for visitors interested in history and design. Rafael Moneo was the inaugural recipient of the Soane Medal in 2017.

Tickets for the October event honoring Scott Brown can be found here.