NATIONAL BUILDING MUSEUM ANNOUNCES DOLORES HAYDEN AS 2022 VINCENT SCULLY PRIZE RECIPIENT

Today the National Building Museum announced that Dolores Hayden, professor emerita of architecture, urbanism and American studies at Yale University, is the 24th recipient of the Museum’s annual Vincent Scully Prize. Established in 1999, the Scully Prize recognizes excellence in practice, scholarship, or criticism in architecture, historic preservation, and urban design. She joins esteemed past recipients, including Mabel O. Wilson, Elizabeth Meyer, Robert Campbell and Inga Saffron.

A public program to present the award to Hayden will be held on Monday, October 3, 2022 from 5:30 to 8 pm at the National Building Museum. The event will be in-person as well as live-streamed. The evening includes a pre-program reception followed by a presentation by Professor Hayden. She will discuss the “urbanism of care,” the idea that cities’ investments in public infrastructure could extend beyond water supply systems, paved streets, schools and transit to include childcare centers in workplaces, free kindergartens and public kitchens.

Hayden’s presentation will draw upon her work documenting the beginnings of this concept from the 1860s through the 1920s, when women proposed this broader definition of public infrastructure. The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities (1981) details the material feminists’ egalitarian visions. Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000 (2003) critiques the segregated metropolitan landscapes Americans did construct using federal subsidies supporting shopping malls and tract houses. The result, according to Hayden, is that today the United States lags behind many European cities where advocates of fair-shared cities promote an “urbanism of care” as part of sustainable development.

“With her focus on the politics of place, gender studies, and urban planning, Dolores Hayden is a true pioneer in using the built environment to document the history of gender, class and race,” said Aileen Fuchs, National Building Museum President and Executive Director. “We are excited to recognize her achievements and impact, which align closely with the work and mission of the Museum around equity and promoting social justice in the built environment.”

The Vincent Scully Prize recipient is selected by a jury, including members James Corner, Paul Goldberger, Walter Hood, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and led by chair Ellen Dunham-Jones.

“Dolores Hayden’s work continues Vincent Scully’s research on American architecture and urbanism,” said Ellen Dunham-Jones, Scully Prize Jury Chair. “Her work both unearths little-known built precedents of socially progressive housing types and demands that we question whose needs and aspirations were served by the policies that manufactured ‘the American Dream.’ Her powerful voice has inspired and emboldened diverse audiences including next-generation feminists, placemakers and New Urbanist planners alike and remains extremely relevant.”