Visionary Architects Connecting Innovation and Design: Sharon Johnston & Mark Lee Named 2024 Neutra Award Medalists
Sharon Johnston, FAIA and Mark Lee, founding partners of the internationally acclaimed architecture firm Johnston Marklee, will accept the 2024 Richard Neutra Award for Professional Excellence and deliver a keynote lecture at Cal Poly Pomona on Monday, Sept. 9.
The award ceremony and lecture will commence at 6:00 p.m. in the Ursa Major Suite at the Bronco Student Center. The event is free and open to the public.
The Neutra Award is presented annually by Cal Poly Pomona’s Department of Architecture. Previous recipients include Pritzker Prize winners Frank Gehry, Tadao Ando, Renzo Piano and Thom Mayne, as well as other prominent architects and designers whose work has made a significant impact on the built environment. It honors individuals who have dedicated their careers to researching, designing, and developing spaces that enhance how we live, work, and play.
"We are honored to receive this award named after Richard Neutra and join a long list of distinguished practitioners and thinkers who have dedicated their careers to the design, research, and development of innovative environments," said Johnston and Lee in a joint statement. "Past recipients have blazed a trail that enabled this type of speculative practice for our generation, especially those rooted in Los Angeles, such as Konrad Wachsmann, Ray Kappe, Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, and Michael Rotondi."
Since founding Johnston Marklee in 1998, Sharon Johnston, FAIA and Mark Lee have established themselves as leading figures in the architecture industry, earning more than 50 major awards, among them the American Academy of Arts & Letters Award in Architecture and the Architectural Record’s Women in Architecture: New Generation Leader award.
The firm has completed projects in 14 countries in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Notable works include the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston, Texas, the renovation of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the design of the Dropbox global headquarters in San Francisco. The firm's work is included in the permanent collections of prestigious institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Upcoming projects include the UCLA Reverend James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center and the interior architecture and museology of the Kuntmuseum Hauptbau in Basel, Switzerland in collaboration with Christ & Gantenbein. In addition to their architectural practice, Johnston and Lee hold academic appointments at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Richard Neutra, one of the most influential architects in the modernist movement, taught at Cal Poly Pomona’s College of Environmental Design until his passing in 1970. The 2,000-square-foot Neutra VDL Studio and Residences in Los Angeles was gifted to the college in 1990 by Neutra’s widow, Dione. Designed by Neutra himself for his family to live in, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2009 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 2016.