AIA awards 2023 Gold Medal to Carol Ross Barney

The AIA has honored Carol Ross Barney, founder of Ross Barney Architects, with the Gold Medal, the professional organization’s highest award given to an individual “whose work has had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture.”

Barney has built an impressive career for herself with particular devotion and attention toward projects serving the public realm. Before she began practicing architecture, she joined the Peace Corps and spent time working with the Costa Rican National Park Service. She worked for Holabird & Root before founding her eponymous firm Ross Barney Architects in Chicago, where she resides.

In her 30-year career, which is far from over, Barney has contributed to a number of significant projects. Of note is her work on the Oklahoma City Federal Building, which was commissioned as a replacement to the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building destroyed in a 1995 bombing. She is also recognized for her contribution to her native Chicago for the addition of the Chicago Riverwalk, a park that stretches from Chicago River to Lake Michigan. The riverside destination takes advantage of disused infrastructure, activating it as public space.

The AIA Gold Medal may be one Barney’s highest achievements received to date, though it is certainly not her first; she and her firm been recognized with over 200 national and international awards. From the AIA and AIA organizations this has included two AIA COTE Top Ten Awards, the 2005 AIA Award for Excellence in Public Architecture, and AIA Illinois Firm Award and Gold Medal. In addition to her architectural practice, Barney teaches as an adjunct professor at Chicago’s Illinois Institute of Technology.

Among the projects on Ross Barney Architects’  drawing board are a revamp of Chicago’s DuSable Park, a former postindustrial site. While the firm has really made a name for itself with park and public space projects, it has also worked on designs for McDonald’s franchises, including one at Walt Disney World that has achieved net-zero design.

“With her focus on design excellence, social responsibility, and generosity, Barney is an unrivaled architect for the people,” the AIA said in its news announcement. “Throughout all of her work, she has endeavored to make the world a better place and, in doing so, made an indelible mark on the profession. Her pioneering approach and ethics exemplify the highest aspirations of architecture.”

Barney’s big win follows that of last year’s recipients, who won as two architects working as a single entity: Angela Brooks and Lawrence Scarpa, life partners and principals at Los Angeles– and Fort Lauderdale–based architecture and design practice Brooks + Scarpa.