Winners of 2020 Jane Drew and Ada Louise Huxtable Prizes Announced

Yasmeen Lari, Pakistan's first female architect, was announced yesterday as the recipient of the 2020 Jane Drew Prize. The award recognizes " an architectural designer who, through their work and commitment to design excellence, has raised the profile of women in architecture." 

Lari, born in Pakistan, lived in London from the age of 15 but then moved back to Pakistan after graduating from the Oxford Brookes School of Architecture in 1964. She subsequently opened Lari Associates in Karachi, designing Anguri Bagh housing project in Lahore, Lines Area Resettlement, and other projects — housing, commercial, and otherwise — before formally retiring in 2000. Yet she still worked, serving as UNESCO’s national adviser for World Heritage Lahore Fort in 2003 and assisting with rebuilding after an earthquake hit the Northern Areas of Pakistan in 2005. 

Named after architect Jane Drew, "a spirited advocate for women in a male-dominated profession," Lari is the ninth winner of the annual prize. Previous recipients include Elizabeth Diller, Amanda Levete, Denise Scott Brown, and Odile Decq.

On the same day, architectural historian and theorist Beatriz Colomina was announced as winner of the 2020 Ada Louise Huxtable Prize for Contribution to Architecture, which "recognizes individuals working in the wider architectural industry who have made a significant contribution to architecture and the built environment."

Born and educated in Spain, Colomina moved to the United States in 1981. She taught at Columbia University but then moved to Princeton, where she is now Professor of Architectural History, Director of Graduate Studies and Founding Director of the Media and Modernity Program. Colomina's writings and exhibitions have covered various disciplines including architecture but also art, technology, sexuality, and media. Notable books include Privacy and Publicity, Domesticity at War, and X-Ray Architecture, while some exhibitions of note are Clip/Stamp/Fold, Playboy Architecture, and the third Istanbul Design Biennial, Are We Human? The Design of the Species, which she curated with her husband Mark Wigley.

Named after Ada Louise Huxtable, the first full-time architecture critic at a U.S. newspaper and the first recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, Colomina is the sixth winner of the annual prize. Previous recipients include photographer Hélène Binet, artist and illustrator Madelon Vriesendorp, sculptor Rachel Whiteread, curator Julia Peyton-Jones, and patron Jane Priestman.