The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), in collaboration with the Cities Programme of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), announces the recipient of the fourth international competition for the James Stirling Memorial Lectures on the City. The jury selected Professor Gerald Frug, 2010-2011 Stirling Lecturer, for his project entitled “The Architecture of Governance”.
The bi-annual James Stirling Memorial Lectures on the City competition was launched in 2003 to inaugurate a unique forum for the advancement of new critical perspectives on the role of
urban design and urban architecture in the development of cities worldwide. In previousyears, winners have included Robert Mangurian and Mary-Ann Ray (2008-2009), Eyal Weizman (2006-2007) and Teddy Cruz (2004-2005) each of whom successfully navigated a competitive screening process. Professor Frug is the first recipient to be nominated for the prize, a trial by the organizers to widen the field of competition and to reduce barriers to eligibility. Unlike previous editions of the Stirling Prize, this jury did not select the winner on the basis of an open competitive process, but decided unanimously to give the award to Professor Frug on the basis of the excellence of his research and writings on urban governance and the relevance of his proposed lecture to the current debate on the future of the city in the 21st century.
Professor Frug is the Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He is the leading expert on the legal structure of urban governance in the United States and is the author of dozens of articles and two important books on the topic: City Making, published in 1999, and City Bound, published in 2009. Professor Frug teaches about urban governance at Harvard Law School in one of the most popular courses in the school. Most of those who teach the subject elsewhere in the United States were his students. Another graduate of the course is President Barack Obama. Prior to his teaching career, Professor Frug had practical experience in dealing with urban issues, serving as Deputy Administrator and, then, as Administrator, of the Health Services Administration of the City of New York. In more recent years, he has lectured on urban governance in cities around the world.
Professor Frug’s proposal “The Architecture of Governance” will analyze the problems facing the organization of cities around the world and will attempt to describe the design of the governance system in a way that makes it recognizable to architects and other designers.
Frug will develop his research project and present the Stirling Lecture on Thursday, October 21, 2010 at the CCA in Montreal, and at the London School of Economics in the Fall of 2011.
For more information, please visit www.cca.qc.ca/pdf/stirling_2010-2011_award_winner_2010_09_21.pdf.