The Richard H. Driehaus Architecture Prize is one of architecture’s highest honors: an annual award for lifetime achievement in classical and traditional design, administered by the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture and carrying a $200,000 prize. This year’s laureate is British architect John Simpson. If his name isn’t already on your radar, it should be.
Who Is John Simpson?
Simpson founded his London-based practice in 1980, now operating as John Simpson Architects. For over four decades he has been one of the most consistent and articulate voices for classical and traditional architecture in the world, at a time when that position was genuinely unfashionable.
Image Credit: www.johnsimpsonarchitects.com
His national profile first crystallized around the 1990 Paternoster Square competition in London, a debate over how to redevelop the area surrounding St. Paul’s Cathedral. While the architectural mainstream was pushing modernist solutions, Simpson made a public case for traditional urbanism. He didn’t win the competition, but he won the argument in the long run. The jury’s prize citation credits that moment as one of the earliest, most visible interventions for modern classicism in the UK.
The Work
Simpson’s portfolio is as varied as it is accomplished. His King’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace demonstrated that traditional architecture could perform at the highest level of civic visibility and institutional prestige.
His Walsh Family Hall of Architecture at the University of Notre Dame (yes, the same institution that awards the Driehaus Prize) is a classical building designed for the world’s leading school of classical architecture education. Few commissions better illustrate a philosophy put into practice.
Walsh Family Hall of Architecture at University of Notre Dame - Image Credit: www.johnsimpsonarchitects.com
He has also completed work at Eton College, Oxford, and Cambridge, navigating the particular challenge of adding new buildings to some of Britain’s most heritage-sensitive campuses.
The project that anchored the 2026 prize announcement, though, is the Royal College of Music redevelopment in London. The “More Music” project added performance venues, museum space, recording studios, and public communal areas to one of Britain’s most storied conservatoires, and it just picked up both the 2025 RIBA London Award and the 2026 Civic Trust Award. This isn’t a career retrospective; Simpson is still at the top of his game.
Royal College of Music - Image Credit: www.johnsimpsonarchitects.com
Why It Matters
Jury chair Stefanos Polyzoides put it well: Simpson has spent decades arguing that traditional architectural forms aren’t just aesthetically pleasing. They’re environmentally sound, contextually durable, and civically meaningful in ways that abstract modernism often isn’t. That argument has gone from contrarian to credible to, increasingly, obvious.
Notre Dame officially announced the prize on January 28, 2026. The formal ceremony took place March 21 in Chicago. For an architect who spent much of his career making the case that classicism is a living language rather than a historical curiosity, the Driehaus Prize is the field’s confirmation that he was right all along.
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