Chicago Architect Wins $200,000 Prize From Notre Dame

Thomas H. Beeby, one of the “Chicago Seven” architects who challenged modernist orthodoxy in the 1970s and 1980s, has received the 2013 Richard H. Driehaus Prize from the University of Notre Dame.

Mr. Beeby is the 11th recipient of the prize, which honors lifetime contributions to traditional, classical, and sustainable architecture and urbanism. He will receive $200,000 - and a bronze miniature of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates - at a ceremony in Chicago on March 23.

Mr. Beeby, a founding principal of HBRA Architects Inc. in Chicago, served from 1985 to 1991 as the dean of the Yale School of Architecture, where he remains an adjunct professor. At his firm Mr. Beeby spent more than 40 years as design director, leading projects like the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University, and the United States Federal Building and Courthouse in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

“Tom Beeby has had a transformational role in modern architecture's return to classical and traditional design principles,” Michael Lykoudis, dean of the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture, said in a statement. “Beeby's recent design of the Tuscaloosa courthouse is a great example of how the rigor and richness of classicism can be used to achieve a sense of place and purpose that will be relevant well into the future.”