Shri Balkrishna Doshi on being awarded UK's Royal Gold Medal 2022

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Last Updated11/12/2021

Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated acclaimed Indian architect Balkrishna Doshi on being awarded the UK's prestigious Royal Gold Medal 2022 and said his contributions to the world of architecture are monumental.
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) announced Mr Doshi will receive the Royal Gold Medal 2022, one of the world's highest honours for architecture.

RIBA said that with a 70-year career and over 100 built projects, 94-year-old Doshi has influenced the direction of architecture in India and its adjacent regions through both his practice and his teaching.
Given in recognition of a lifetime's work, the Royal Gold Medal is approved personally by Queen Elizabeth II and is given to a person or group of people who have had a significant influence on the advancement of architecture.

This is awarded annually by the Royal Institute of British Architects on behalf of the British monarch, in recognition of an individual's or group's substantial contribution to international architecture.
It is given for a distinguished body of work rather than for one building, and is therefore not awarded for merely being currently fashionable.
The medal was first awarded in 1848 to Charles Robert Cockerell, and its second recipient was the Italian Luigi Canina in 1849.
The winners include some of the most influential architects of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1864), Frank Lloyd Wright (1941), Le Corbusier (1953), Walter Gropius (1956), Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1959) and Buckminster Fuller (1968).
Candidates of all nationalities are eligible to receive the award.

It is a professional body for architects primarily in the United Kingdom, but also internationally, founded for the advancement of architecture under its royal charter granted in 1837, three supplemental charters and a new charter granted in 1971.
It was founded as the Institute of British Architects in London in 1834, the RIBA retains a central London headquarters at 66 Portland Place as well as a network of regional offices.
Its members played a leading part in the promotion of architectural education in the United Kingdom; the RIBA Library, also established in 1834, is one of the three largest architectural libraries in the world and the largest in Europe.
The RIBA also played a prominent role in the development of UK architects' registration bodies.
This institute administers some of the oldest architectural awards in the world, including President's Medals and the Royal Gold Medal, plus the Stirling Prize.
It also manages RIBA Competitions which organises architectural and other design-related competitions.
The RIBA was historically a male-dominated body, first admitting women members in 1898, and only appointing its first female president in 2009.

He is an Indian architect considered to be an important figure of Indian architecture and noted for his contributions to the evolution of architectural discourse in India.
He has worked under Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn, he is a pioneer of modernist and brutalist architecture in India.
His more noteworthy designs include the IIM Bangalore, IIM Udaipur, NIFT Delhi, Amdavad ni Gufa, CEPT University, and the Aranya Low Cost Housing development in Indore which was awarded the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.
In 2018, he became the first Indian architect to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize, which is considered one of the most prestigious prizes in architecture.
He has also been awarded the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan.