Phyllis Lambert Awarded Golden Lion

John Hill

26. May 2014

Phyllis Lambert. Photo: © Média par Claude Gagnon

The founder of the Canadian Centre for Architecture will receive the prize from Venice Biennale director Rem Koolhaas.

In 2010 Rem Koolhaas was awarded the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement from Kazuyo Sejima, the director of the 12th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale. Now that Koolhaas is (finally) director of the 14th Biennale that opens on June 7, 2014, he is bestowing the Golden Lion upon Phyllis Lambert, the founder and Director Emeritus of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal. Lambert is also known for selecting Mies van der Rohe as architect of the Seagram Building, considered a masterpiece of 20th century architecture. In a statement, Koolhaas said of the award to Lambert:

Not as an architect, but as a client and custodian, Phyllis Lambert has made a huge contribution to architecture. Without her participation, one of the few realizations in the 20th century of perfection on earth – the Seagram Building in New York – would not have happened. Her creation of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal combines rare vision with rare generosity to preserve crucial episodes of architecture’s heritage and to study them under ideal conditions. Architects make architecture; Phyllis Lambert made architects.

And in a statement from the CCA, Lambert said this of the award:

I am thrilled and wonderfully honored to receive from the Board of the Venice Biennale the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. Together with the Biennale’s 14th International Architectural Exhibition, Fundamentals, the award marks the urgent role of architecture writ large in the unfolding of the world’s increasingly challenging social and ecological

Lambert will receive the Golden Lion in a ceremony on the opening day of the Venice Biennale.