As announced today by the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., urban historian and architect Dolores Hayden will join the ranks of Robert A.M. Stern, Phyllis Labert, Robert Venturi and Denise Brown, and noted urban planning enthusiast Prince Charles as the latest recipient of the illustrious Vincent Scully Prize, an award program established in 1999 to recognize exemplary practice, scholarship or criticism in architecture, historic preservation, and urban design.

The prize is named after its late inaugural recipient, a Sterling Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at Yale University and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Miami who, as noted by the National Building Museum, “inspired generations across the building disciplines” over a span of more than four decades. More recent Scully Prize honorees include scholar and designer Mabel O. Wilson, landscape architect Elizabeth Mayer, and Inga Saffron and Robert Campbell, architecture critics for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Boston Globe, respectively.

The announcement of Hayden, professor emerita of architecture, urbanism and American studies at Yale University, as the 2022 recipient of the Scully Prize marks a return to the award’s New Haven–based roots.

“Dolores Hayden’s work continues Vincent Scully’s research on American architecture and urbanism,” said Ellen Dunham-Jones, chair of the 2022 Scully Prize jury. “Her work both unearths little-known built precedents of socially progressive housing types and demands that we question whose needs and aspirations were served by the policies that manufactured ‘the American Dream.’ Her powerful voice has inspired and emboldened diverse audiences including next-generation feminists, placemakers and New Urbanist planners alike and remains extremely relevant.”

Joining Dunham-Jones on the current jury is Walter Hood and James Corner along with past Scully Prize recipients Paul Goldberger and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk.

“With her focus on the politics of place, gender studies, and urban planning, Dolores Hayden is a true pioneer in using the built environment to document the history of gender, class and race,” added Aileen Fuchs, president and executive director of the National Building Museum. “We are excited to recognize her achievements and impact, which align closely with the work and mission of the Museum around equity and promoting social justice in the built environment.”

As the National Building Museum elaborated in its announcement, Hayden, a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and the Harvard Graduate School of Design, “pioneered the analysis of American built environments to document the history of gender, class, and race” beginning in the 1970s. Hayden has authored six acclaimed books. They include Redesigning the American Dream: The Future of Housing, Work, and Family Life (1984); Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000 (2003); and A Field Guide to Sprawl (2004), all of which are critical explorations of tract housing and commercial development. Other major published works include Seven American Utopias: The Architecture of Communitarian Socialism, 1790-1975 (1977); The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (1995), and The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities (1981).

In addition to Yale, where she served as professor until her 2017 retirement, Hayden has also taught at the University of California, Berkeley; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California, Los Angeles. She is also a published poet.

Hayden will be presented with the Scully Prize at an in-person ceremony held at the National Building Museum on the evening of October 3 that will also be livestreamed for those wishing to view the proceedings remotely. Complementing the conferral of the award will be a public program including a presentation by Hayden on the “urbanism of care,” which the museum described as “the idea that cities’ investments in public infrastructure could extend beyond water supply systems, paved streets, schools and transit to include childcare centers in workplaces, free kindergartens and public kitchens.”

More details on the October 3 event can be found here.