A Master of Public Housing Gets His Due

If you don’t follow British architecture closely, you may not know the name of the 2017 recipient of Britain’s most prestigious lifetime architectural achievement gong, the RIBA Royal Gold Medal. Yesterday, the Royal Institute of British Architects awarded the medal to Neave Brown, an 88-year-old American born, London-based architect whose work has focused on that least prestigious and most reviled of specialisms, public housing.

Brown’s work is hardly unsung—he’s the first architect working in Britain to have every one of his buildings listed as a historic monument. But a specialist in public housing still makes an unusual choice for an award that in the past has gone to starchitects known for high-profile prestige projects such as Zaha Hadid and I.M. Pei. So why is Brown’s work so worthy of celebration, and why, after retiring some years ago, is he getting the medal now?