Carol Ross Barney, FAIA, has won the AIA Gold Medal for 2023, the first living woman architect to win the award as an individual. (Julia Morgan received the recognition decades after her death; Denise Scott Brown in 2016 and Angela Brooks in 2022 each won with their partners.)

Ross Barney, who established her office in her hometown of Chicago in 1981, is widely known for her award-winning public-facing projects, including schools; transit stations; the Oklahoma City Federal Building (2005) that replaced the structure destroyed in the 1995 terrorist bombing; and perhaps most notably, the Chicago Riverwalk.

Carol Ross Barney receiving her Design Leader award from RECORD's editor-in-chief Cathleen McGuigan at this year's Women in Architecture Awards in October. Photo © Kristen Blush

In October, Ross Barney was honored as Design Leader in Architectural Record’s annual Women in Architecture awards. In 2021, she won the National Design Award from the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.

“As a kid, there were spaces that impressed me,” she told RECORD in 2021, “I was really aware of that power. I wanted to do that. But I had two epiphanies. One was that public space has a much bigger impact than other spaces...The second was that I’ve always felt empowered working in the public realm, because I see myself as part of a community, and that makes me not only the designer but the client.”

The AIA also announced that the Seattle-based practice Mithun is the 2023 Firm of the Year; Dr. Sharon Sutton, FAIA, will receive the Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education; and Robert L. Easter, FAIA, will be honored with the Whitney M. Young, Jr. Award.