Carol Ross Barney, FAIA, is the 2023 American Institute of Architects Gold Medal winner. This prestigious award honors an individual or pair whose significant body of work has had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture. Only one gold medal is awarded each year by the AIA. Carol is the first living woman to be awarded the Gold Medal individually. Carol’s portfolio is a remarkable essay in making a difference through public work.
For the past 20 years, Carol’s firm, Ross Barney Architects, has been a tenant at 10 West Hubbard, our River North loft building in the former offices of the late American architect Harry Weese. She was one of the eight founding members of Chicago Women in Architecture in 1974 and she continues to work with the organization as vice chair of its Board of Directors.
Carol has won more than 200 national and international awards. This award places Carol in rare air along with prior Gold Metal award winners, including Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Louis Skidmore, I.M. Pei, Frank Gehry and Santiago Calatrava. In the first half of the 1900’s, Chicago architects won the AIA Gold Medal somewhat regularly – among them Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright and John Wellborn Root. Carol is the first local to win since Mies van der Rohe in 1960, a long drought for a city that considers its architects and architecture among its most important cultural products.
Congratulations Carol!