Sir John Soane's Museum visits the studio of Madelon Vriesendorp in a short film that announces the Dutch artist is the 2025 recipient of the Soane Medal. Vriesendorp expresses her surprise and pleasure at being named the winner, and the self-proclaimed “obsessive artist” explains why she surrounds herself with so many objects.
Madelon Vriesendorp is best known to architects as one of the founders of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), alongside her then-husband Rem Koolhaas and Elia and Zoe Zenghelis, in 1975, and for the paintings she produced for Koolhaas's Delirious New York, including a post-coital portrait of the Chrysler Building and Empire State Building in bed together for the cover of the book's coveted 1978 first edition. Often Vriesendorp's paintings were attributed to Koolhaas and other men, something she discussed when receiving the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize in 2018, so the Soane Medal can be seen as a continuation of the record being corrected on her valuable contributions to architecture.
“Over the decades,” says the Sir John Soane's Museum website, “her work has given architectural theories playful and memorable identities, helping to explain complex ideas behind Modern and Post-Modern architecture.” Accordingly, the 2025 Soane Medal “recognizes her lasting contribution to architecture and the legacy of the designs, images and paintings she has created, which continue to influence the architects of today and tomorrow.” Vriesendorp will receive the award at the Royal Academy in London on November 18, when she will deliver a lecture that is open to all.
The Soane Medal was established in 2017 to “[continue] the mission of Sir John Soane to encourage a better understanding of the central importance of architecture in people’s lives” and “[recognize] architects, educators and critics who have made a major contribution to their field through practice, history or theory, and in doing so have furthered and enriched the public understanding of architecture.” The previous recipients of the Soane Medal are:
- Structural engineer Hanif Kara in 2024
- French architects Anne Lacaton and Jean-Phlippe Vassal in 2023
- British architect Peter Barber in 2022
- Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum in 2021
- (No medal in 2020 due to Covid-19)
- British architect and historian Kenneth Frampton in 2019
- Spanish architect Rafael Moneo in 2018
- American architect Denise Scott Brown in 2017