Few architects honor the past and envision the future as clearly as John Vinci, FAIA, who will be honored with the AIA Chicago Lifetime Achievement Award at Designight on Friday, October 24.
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.
Mr. Vinci has been an SAH member since 1980.
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