John Vinci to be Honored With AIA Chicago Lifetime Achievement Award
CHICAGO — John Vinci, FAIA, will be honored with the AIA Chicago Lifetime Achievement Award at Designight on Friday, Oct. 24. The 59th annual awards night will also honor the year’s best in Chicago architecture and the worldwide work of Chicago-area firms. Last year, 35 awards across four categories were presented at an event attended by nearly 1,000 people at the Grand Ballroom at Navy Pier.
Vinci, 77, has been practicing architecture since he graduated from Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in 1960. A collaborator with famed architectural photographer Richard Nickel, Vinci is known for his staunch, outspoken defense of classic Chicago architecture over the past 50 years. From his initial preservation work as a student — organizing an IIT exhibition on the work of Adler & Sullivan or salvaging ornamentation from the then soon-to-be demolished Garrick Theater — he has played an integral part in the preservation and restoration of works from architects as varied as Frank Lloyd Wright to modernists Ed Barnes, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Eero Saarinen. Among his numerous restoration projects, Vinci was instrumental in the salvation and reconstruction of Louis Sullivan’s Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room.