Eric Owen Moss to receive 2011 Jencks Award

Date:

21 October 2011

Press office contact:

Beatrice Cooke
T: +44 (0)207 307 3813
E: beatrice.cooke@riba.org

Tuesday 6 December 2011, 18.30, RIBA

Lecture by Eric Owen Moss chaired by Charles Jencks.

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) is pleased to announce that American architect Eric Owen Moss is to receive the 2011 Jencks Award. The Jencks Award is given annually to an individual (or practice) that has recently made a major contribution internationally to both the theory and practice of architecture. The award will be presented to Eric Owen Moss on 6 December at the RIBA, where he will give a public lecture, chaired by Charles Jencks.

Eric Owen Moss started his office in 1973 in Los Angeles, California. Since then, Eric Owen Moss Architects (EOMA) has designed and built many outstanding buildings that reflect a unique design vision and craft. The practice has designed and completed a variety of project types, involving both new construction and unusual renovation and reconstitution of existing structures. EOMA’s work has included university facilities, office buildings, corporate headquarters, cultural institutions, theatres, galleries and exhibition spaces, restaurants, large-scale urban projects and public space, housing, and private residences. The office’s portfolio stands out particularly for not having an inclination toward any single architectural vocabulary, but rather an unfailing attention to the relationship between inventive, client-oriented problem solving, and the careful development of a larger vision.

Over the last 30 years EOMA has built a wide array of award-winning buildings, and has helped shape the discourse of architecture internationally. That discussion continues to be reflected both in innovative structures, and also in lectures, exhibitions, publishing, and teaching around the world. Eric Owen Moss’ publications include Who Says What Architecture Is?, Eric Owen Moss: The Uncertainly of doing and Architecture + Design LA.

Recently, Eric Owen Moss has lectured in Dubai, Belgrade, Vienna, London, Beijing and Paris. EOMA has been recognized with over 100 local, national and international awards. Recent projects include two 230 feet-high office towers and a multi-theatre performance centre in Los Angeles, a hotel and office complex in West Hollywood, a 120,000 square metre mixed-use project in Kazakhstan, and a masterplan for a new ecologically integrated city in La Paz.

Charles Jencks commented on Eric Owen Moss winning the award:

“Eric Moss has been committed to evolving a unique local grammar of architecture from the Culver City, Los Angeles, vernacular that is at once creative, critical and evocative, a commitment to place and character for thirty years that is without parallel. ‘Critical Regionalism’ is often bandied about as a vague piety – is this the real thing?”

Previous recipients of the prestigious Jencks Award include Zaha Hadid, Foreign Office Architects, Peter Eisenman, Cecil Balmond, UNStudio, Wolf D. Prix & Coop Himmelb(l)au, Charles Correa and Steven Holl.

Notes to editors

1. For further information, interview requests and images, contact Beatrice Cooke in the RIBA Press Office on 020 7307 3813 or e-mail beatrice.cooke@inst.riba.org|

2. Biography

Eric Owen Moss was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. He received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1965. He continued his education, earning his Masters of Architecture from the University of California at Berkeley, College of Environmental Design, in 1968 and a second Masters of Architecture from Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 1972.

Eric Owen Moss was honored with the Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1999. He received the AIA/LA Gold Medal in 2001 for the achievement of an outstanding body of architectural works. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architecture and was a recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award for the University of California, Berkeley in 2003. In 2007 he received the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize, recognizing a distinguished history of architectural design.

Eric Owen Moss has held teaching positions at major universities around the world including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and the Royal Academy in Copenhagen. For many years he has also been a professor at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), and has served as its director since 2003. He was honored as the 2006 AIA/LA Educator of the Year.

In 2010, Austrian Culture Minister Claudia Schmied appointed Eric Owen Moss as Commissioner for the Austrian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale – the first foreign architect to be asked to commission the national pavilion. The exhibition was held from 29 August to 21 November 2010.

EOMA recently published Eric Owen Moss – Construction Manual. This 1,562-page monograph chronicles 40 projects over the past 20 years. The design and construction process of each project is fully described through early sketches, physical models, technical drawings, material experiments and mock-ups, and construction photographs. The book is published by AADCU in China.

3. The Jencks Award is awarded annually to an individual (or practice) that has recently made a major contribution simultaneously to the theory and practice of architecture. Winners are invited to deliver a lecture at the RIBA. Charles Jencks is a landscape designer, architectural theorist and writer, best known for his writing on post-modern architecture and as Trustee and Co-founder of Maggie's Cancer Caring Centres with Maggie Keswick.

4. The 2011 Jencks Award lecture takes place at the Jarvis Hall, RIBA, 66 Portland Place, London W1B 1AD. Nearest tubes are Oxford Circus, Regent’s Park and Great Portland Street. Tickets for the Jencks Award lecture cost £8.50 (£5.50 RIBA members, students, concessions). To book online, go to www.architecture.com|

or call the RIBA booking line: 020 7307 3699.

5. For further information about Eric Owen Moss and his practice, please go to: www.ericowenmoss.com|

6. The Royal Institute of British Architects champions better buildings, communities and the environment through architecture and its members. www.architecture.com|