Indian architect Balkrishna Doshi has been named the recipient of the RIBA Royal Gold Medal 2022.
Balkrishna Doshi will receive the Royal Gold Medal, an award given in recognition of his signification contribution to architecture and approved by the Queen, in a ceremony in 2022.
Pritzer Prize-winning architect Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi – B.V Doshi – studied at the J J School of Architecture in Mumbai before going on to work with Le Corbusier and Louis Khan, and founded his own studio Vastushilpa in 1956. He has designed over 100 projects in a career spanning seven decades. Among them, the Aranya Low Cost Housing project built in 1989 in Indore, India, and which won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1995, the CEPT University in Ahmedabad, built in 1966 and adapted in 2012 and Sangath, the building he built in 1981 for his own architecture practice.
Balkrishna Doshi was awarded the RIBA Gold Medal by a selection committee was chaired by Simon Allford and comprised architects David Adjaye and Alison Brooks, Head of Leicester School of Art, Design and Architecture at De Montfort University Kate Cheyne and Dr Gus Casely-Hayford, Professor of Practice at SOAS.
“Balkrishna Doshi’s outstanding contribution to the art of architecture, the craft of construction and the practice of urban design establish him as a most deserving recipient of this award and I greatly look forward to him being presented with the medal next year,” said Allford.
“At ninety-four years old he has influenced generations of architects through his delightfully purposeful architecture. Influenced by his time spent in the office of Le Corbusier his work nevertheless is that of an original and independent thinker – able to undo, redo and evolve. In the twentieth century, when technology facilitated many architects to build independently of local climate and tradition, Balkrishna remained closely connected with his hinterland: its climate, technologies new and old and crafts.”
The 2022 RIBA Honours Committee praised the “visionary” architect for being “a living testament to the potential of an architectural history of ideas, passed through practice and education from one generation to the next.”
“I am pleasantly surprised and deeply humbled to receive the Royal Gold Medal from the Queen of England. What a great honour!,” said Balkrishna Doshi.
“The news of this award brought back memories of my time working with Le Corbusier in 1953 when he had just received the news of getting the Royal Gold Medal. I vividly recollect his excitement to receive this honour from Her Majesty. He said to me metaphorically, ‘I wonder how big and heavy this medal will be.’ Today, six decades later I feel truly overwhelmed to be bestowed with the same award as my guru, Le Corbusier – honouring my six decades of practice. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my wife, my daughters and most importantly my team and collaborators at Sangath my studio.”
