Farshid Moussavi wins 2026 Soane Medal for architecture
British-Iranian architect Farshid Moussavi has been awarded this year's Soane Medal for her "sustained and rigorous" contribution to architecture through building, teaching and writing.
Moussavi, who founded Farshid Moussavi Architects in 2011 and is an architecture professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, becomes the 10th winner of the prestigious award that was established in 2017.
"For nearly four decades, Farshid Moussavi has demonstrated that ethics in architecture is not a matter of proclamation but of practice – that a building's moral life resides in the countless decisions, large and small, through which it shapes the everyday experience of those who use it," said architect and Soane Medal jury chair Amin Taha.
"In a profession often tempted by spectacle on one side and resignation on the other, Moussavi charts a third path: attentiveness," he continued.
"She teaches that architects cannot control how their buildings will be used or perceived, and that this uncertainty is not a limitation but an ethical opening, an invitation to design with humility, curiosity and care for lives other than one's own."
"It is for this sustained and rigorous inquiry, pursued simultaneously through building, teaching and writing, that the jury awards her the 2026 Soane Medal."
The annual Soane Medal award was established by the Sir John Soane's Museum in 2017 to celebrate the museum's founder and his goal to bring attention to the importance of architecture in people's lives.
Some of Moussavi's notable buildings include the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland and the Ismaili Center in Houston, which opened last year.
Other projects include Victoria Beckam's flagship store in London, Harrods Toy Department in London, La Folie Divine apartments in Montpellier, and Îlot 19 La Défense-Nanterre housing in Paris.
While at her previous studio, Foreign Office Architects, Moussavi completed the futuristic Yokohama International Port Terminal in 2002.
"To be recognised by an institution whose founder understood so clearly that architecture is never only about architecture is, for me, the most meaningful kind of acknowledgement, and one I receive with both delight and a sense of genuine connection to this place," said Moussavi.
"The Soane Museum has always felt to me like one of the most precise arguments in architecture: that a building can be simultaneously a home, a practice, and a way of thinking about the world, and that architecture is inseparable from the objects, histories, and ideas that surround it."
"What strikes me most is this refusal of separation: between the personal and the professional, between the aesthetic and the intellectual, between the building and its contents," she continued. "These are questions that have preoccupied my own practice, teaching, and writing for a long time."
Moussavi was born in Shiraz, Iran, in 1965. She studied to become an architect at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, University College London and University of Dundee.
She was the former head of the Institute of Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and has also previously taught at Architectural Association in London, the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam, the Hoger Architectuur Instituut Sint-Lucas in Gent, and at American institutions UCLA, Princeton, and Columbia University.
In 2022, Moussavi was awarded the Jane Drew Prize for elevating the profile of women in architecture.
She will be presented with Soane Medal award at the Royal Academy in London on 24 November 2026.
Last year's Soane Medal was awarded to artist and OMA co-founder Madelon Vriesendorp, and structural engineer Hanif Kara won in 2024.
The top photo of Farshid Moussavi is by Tilly Buckroyd.
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