College of Built Environments at the University of Washington.
Jones and Jones win Neutra Medal
Thursday March 2009Grant Jones (BArch ’62) and Ilze Jones (BArch ’64), principals of Jones & Jones in Seattle, won the Richard Neutra Medal for Professional Excellence. Richard Neutra, one of modernism's most important architects, pioneered the field of human behavior and the design of the built environment. The Neutra Medal gives Grant Jones and Ilze Jones recognition as environmental luminaries of national and international consequence for numerous innovations in river planning, aesthetic science, context-sensitive highway design, green infrastructure, cultural landscapes, integration of architecture and landscape architecture, and the most recent Intrinsic Landscape Resources Information System.
Neutra considered his most important contribution to be his practice, research, and writing on the possibility of survival through design. His definitive work on the subject, Survival by Design (Oxford University Press, 1954), was seminal in the growth of the ecological/sustainable design movement. The Neutra Medal, conferred by the Neutra family and California State Polytechnic University (where Neutra taught), recognizes those who have made influential contributions to the body of knowledge in environmental design. Notable past Neutra winners include Al Gore (Earth in the Balance); Ian McHarg, inventor of GIS; and Samual Mockbee, founder of Rural Studio.