Eric Owen Moss to receive 2011 Jencks Award

The RIBA has awarded Eric Owen Moss the 2011 Jencks Award. It will be presented on 6 December at the RIBA, where the American architect will give a public lecture chaired by Charles Jencks.

Jencks said: “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?”

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.

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.

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