On Monday it was announced that Phyllis Lambert has been chosen to be the recipient of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 14th Venice International Architecture Exhibition, "Fundamentals". This was a rather unusual yet intriguing choice, since Lambert is not a conventional architect, but also a preservationist, educator and philanthropist.
Phyllis was born in Montreal in 1927, the daughter of Samuel Bronfman, founder of the Seagram's liquor empire. In 1949 she married business consultant Jean Lambert. When her marriage ended in 1954 she kept her husband's name, and moved to New York where she became more involved in architecture.
She persuaded her father to employ her as architectural consultant for the proposed Seagram House on Park Avenue, a project for which she hired Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
Completed in 1958, the Seagram building was characterised by a radically new design, and soon became a local landmark also thanks to its entrance canopy that makes the 38 storey building look as if it were suspended from the ground.
The Seagram Building and fountain are also featured in the classic 1961 film, Breakfast at Tiffany's, starring Audrey Hepburn.
Lambert enrolled in the program Mies van der Rohe established at the Illinois Institute of Technology studying under Myron Goldsmith. After receiving her MS Arch in 1963, she designed the Saidye Bronfman Centre in Montreal with Mies van der Rohe and later on bought and renovated Los Angeles's Biltmore Hotel.
In the '70s, returning to Montreal from Paris, Lambert became a heritage and civic activist (the mayor of Montreal dubbed her the "Goddess of the Streets"), and started campaigning to save the historic area of the city around the old port. Founding a preservation group, and an independent think-tank (the Montreal Institute of Policy Alternatives), Lambert helped saving some of Montreal's best-beloved neighborhoods and buildings.
Lambert's greatest achievement remains the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) - a museum and research centre located around a railway baron's abandoned mansion in Montreal. Lambert bought the house in 1974 to prevent its demolition, restored it and hired architect Peter Rose to build the CCA.
The centre opened in 1989 and became famous for its rich and well stocked library of books on history, theory and the practice of architecture, plus prints and architectural drawings.
The recipient of many honors and awards, a critical thinker, leader in social issues and a genuine crusader when it came to preservation projects, Lambert became the subject of a documentary in 2007 - Citizen Lambert: Joan of architecture, directed by Teri Wehn-Damisch.
Among the architects she admires there is Rem Koolhaas, director of this year's Biennale that promises to be an unusual one, with spaces in the Arsenale dedicated to theatre performances, events and exhibitions, and with an extended duration (6 months instead of 3 - from June 7th to November 23rd 2014).
Phyllis Lambert stated in an official press release from the CCA: "I am thrilled and wonderfully honoured to receive from the Board of the Venice Biennale the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. Together with the Biennale’s 14th International Architectural Exhibition, Fundamentals, the award marks the urgent role of architecture writ large in the unfolding of the world’s increasingly challenging social and ecological condition."
The Board of la Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta, under Director Rem Koolhaas, issued the following motivation: "Not as an architect, but as a client and custodian, Phyllis Lambert has made a huge contribution to architecture. Without her participation, one of the few realizations in the 20th century of perfection on earth – the Seagram Building in New York – would not have happened. Her creation of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal combines rare vision with rare generosity to preserve crucial episodes of architecture’s heritage and to study them under ideal conditions. Architects make architecture; Phyllis Lambert made architects…"
Phyllos Lambert will officially received the Golden Lion at the awarding ceremony on Saturday 7th June 2014 in the Giardini of the Biennale.
Image credits for this post:
1. Philip Johnson, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Phyllis Lambert in front of an image of the model for the Seagram building, New York, 1955. Gelatin silver print, 7½ × 9⅜ in. Photographer unknown. Fonds Phyllis Lambert, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal. © United Press International.
4. View of the construction site showing Shaughnessy House under renovation on the right and apartment houses and office buildings in the background, Canadian Centre for Architecture under construction, Montreal. Photography by David Miller, 1985, CCA Collection.
5. Robert Burley. View of the Esplanade and the Allegorical Columns, Canadian Centre for Architecture Garden, Montreal, 1990. CCA Collection © Robert Burley.
6. Phyllis Lambert and Rem Koolhaas at the Soirée Phyllisienne, Canadian Centre for Architecture, 7 June 2007 © CCA
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