Sir Terry Farrell Awarded The Royal Town Planning Institute’s Gold Medal

We are delighted to announce that Sir Terry Farrell has been awarded the Royal Town Planning Institute’s Gold Medal in recognition of his outstanding achievements as one of the world’s most influential architects, planners and urban designers.

The Gold Medal is open to all classes of membership internationally and has only been awarded 14 times in the RTPI’s history. Past recipients have included such luminaries as Sir Patrick Abercrombie, Lewis Mumford, Sir Colin Buchanan CBE and Sir Peter Hall.

This award is in recognition of Sir Terry’s outstanding contribution towards developing thinking in urban design, his championing of urban planning and contribution to policy shaping at a national level, and his outstanding impact on place making through his professional career as an architect planner and urban designer.

Stephen Wilkinson, RTPI President, said: “Sir Terry has a deep passion and understanding for places and people and has successfully demonstrated that in his work throughout his career. He is one of the few top practitioners who has truly embraced architecture, urban design and planning in a holistic vision and so vitally helped to advance integrated thinking among these disciplines.

“Through his belief in place and people he has been instrumental in creating a culture where communities become more involved in the quality of their neighbourhoods.

“The RTPI Gold Medal is the Institute’s greatest accolade. I am delighted that we are recognising his enormous contribution to place-making and the planning profession, and the way he has transformed some of our cities and made them better places.”

Sir Terry said: “I am very honoured by the recognition that this award represents, particularly as it reflects the growing awareness that planning is a highly creative and pro-active endeavour that has the potential to transform places and communities. My work these last 50 or so years has been heavily involved in creating a kinder, less doctrinaire world than that of the previous era of high modernism. It has been about layering, learning from the past and regenerating with communities’ involvement from the bottom up.

“The 21st century is the century of global city making, which must be more sophisticated, joined up, sustainable and human centred going forward. Creative planning must lead future city making.”

The Gold Medal will be presented to Sir Terry at a ceremony in the autumn.  Read the full release here.

11 July 2017

I am very honoured by the recognition that this award represents, particularly as it reflects the growing awareness that planning is a highly creative and pro-active endeavour that has the potential to transform places and communities.

– Sir Terry Farrell, Principal