Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, holders of the Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture for the year 2008

American architects, married couple Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, have become the sixth recipients of the Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture. They will receive the award, in the form of a model of the Athenian Lysicrates Monument, along with a financial reward of $200,000 ($100,000 per person), during a gala ceremony in Chicago on March 29, 2008.
Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk are among the most significant and influential representatives of contemporary traditional architecture. Both are graduates of the Yale School of Architecture, and their collaborative studio Duany Plater-Zyberk (DPZ, founded in 1980) in Miami specializes in urbanism, the rehabilitation of devastated residential areas, and the establishment of new “utilizing successful and sustainable design ideals in the tasks of modern life.” (Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk). Their work includes numerous theoretical papers, publications, and nearly 300 projects for the revitalization or construction of cities and urban neighborhoods (especially in the USA, with designs for Berlin, Munich, Mostar, and Istanbul among others in Europe). They are among the initiators and key figures of the so-called New Urbanism (Congress for New Urbanism, Chicago, 1993, and the document Charter for New Urbanism), which aims to improve the social, psychological, and ecological conditions of urban life through the revival of traditional forms, emphasis on visual shape diversity, pedestrian traffic, and the creation of places for developing community ties.
The Driehaus Prize (Richard H. Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture) is the most prestigious award for contemporary traditional architecture. It has been awarded annually by the School of Architecture at Notre Dame (Indiana, USA) since 2003, and its sponsor, American entrepreneur Richard H. Driehaus, supports it as a deliberate counterbalance to the Pritzker Prize, which is awarded with an equally high financial reward to avant-garde-oriented architects (with a few postmodern exceptions). Alongside the Driehaus Prize, the Henry H. Reed Prize is awarded, designated for outstanding advocates of classical architecture from non-architects, i.e., theorists, publicists, etc., named after one of the first authors to point out the devastation of the environment and culture caused by the uncritical implementation of modernist architectural doctrines (the book The Golden City, New York 1959; in this regard, the similarly writing Austrian art historian Hans Sedlmayr is better known in Czech translations). So far, the Driehaus Prize has been awarded to Léon Krier (2003, Luxembourg), Demetri Porphyrios (2004, United Kingdom), Quinlan Terry (2005, United Kingdom), Allan Greenberg (2006, USA), and Jaquelin T. Robertson (2007, USA).

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