ARTINFO looks back on an eventful year.Alejandro Aravena2016 was certainly a big year for the Chilean architect. The director of the 15th Architecture Biennale in Venice curated a highly successful and inspiring international survey of what architecture can do today with “Reporting from the Front” and set a new attendance record with over 260,000 visitors in six months—only to be topped by this year’s Pritzker Prize, awarded to Aravena shortly before the Biennale opened.Read more about the 15th Architecture Biennale in Venice here.Paolo Mendes da RochaPaulo Mendes da Rocha was perhaps the most celebrated architect of 2016. First, the 88-year-old was awarded the Golden Lion for his lifetime achievement at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale; then he received the Praemium Imperiale, Japan’s most prestigious prize for international artists, architects, and creators; and finally, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) announced Mendes da Rocha as the winner of the 2017 Royal Gold Medal, the UK’s highest decoration in the field. After the Mies van der Rohe Prize in 2000 and the Pritzker Prize in 2006, the Brazilian architect can now pride himself of being honored with virtually all of the industry’s leading awards.Paul Revere WilliamsEarlier this month, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) announced Paul Revere Williams (1894-1980) as the first African-American architect to be posthumously awarded the AIA Gold Medal in 2017. “Our profession desperately needs more architects like Paul Williams,” wrote William J. Bates, FAIA, in his support of William’s nomination for the AIA Gold Medal, in a statement. “His pioneering career has encouraged others to cross a chasm of historic biases. I can’t think of another architect whose work embodies the spirit of the Gold Medal better. His recognition demonstrates a significant shift in the equity for the profession and the institute.” Williams realized over 3,000 projects during his career of five decades; among the 2,000 private homes he designed were numerous residencies for celebrities as illustrious as Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball, and Baron Hilton. Iconic public buildings by Williams include the Palm Springs Tennis Center (1946), the renovation of the legendary Beverly Hills Hotel (1949), and the space age LAX Theme Building (1961). According to the AIA, eight of his projects have been named to the National Register of Historic Places.Caruso St John ArchitectsDamien Hirst’s Newport Street Gallery in London by Caruso St John Architects won the 2016 RIBA Stirling Prize as best new building—one of the most prestigious architectural accolades in the UK. “This highly accomplished and expertly detailed art gallery is a bold and confident contribution to the best of UK architecture,” the Stirling prize jury explained in a statement. The award came sixteen years after the firm, founded in 1990 by Adam Caruso and Peter St John, was first included on the shortlist.David Adjaye2016 saw a number of spectacular museum openings, with the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. by British architect David Adjaye being one of the most anticipated. Constructed on the last remaining plot on the National Mall, the museum was inaugurated last September under much public and critical acclaim. Only days before the ceremony, Adjaye, who was born in 1966 in Tanzania, was awarded the 2016 Panerei London Design Medal for his work on the National Museum of African American History and Culture and his career over the past two decades.Bjarke IngelsDanish architect Bjarke Ingels and his firm BIG continued to make waves in 2016; their most prominent project this year: the “courtscraper” VIA 57 West in New York, which won the International Highrise Award 2016. Designed as a “hybrid of an American high-rise and a European perimeter development,” the structure has also spurred controversy, courtesy of New York starchitect and Pritzker laureate Richard Meier, who recently criticized the project in an interview with Dezeen. Nonetheless, Bjarke Ingels remains one of the most influential architects of the present, making it into Time Magazine’s list of “100 most influential people 2016” in April.Le CorbusierFrench-Swiss architect Le Corbusier posthumously made headlines in July, when 17 sites designed by him were included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. Among projects which were chosen in a “transnational serial property” of seven countries are the Complexe du Capitole in Chandigarh, India; the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, Japan; the House of Dr Curutchet in La Plata, Argentina; the Unité d’habitation in Marseille, France; and two contributions Le Corbusier made to Mies van der Rohe’s Weissenhof estate in the German city of Stuttgart, created in 1927 as an international survey of modern architecture.Zaha HadidThe news of Zaha Hadid’s untimely death this March was a blow for the art and the architecture world alike. At only 65, the Iraqi-British architect died of a heart attack at a hospital in Miami, where she was being treated for bronchitis. Hadid was the first woman to receive the Pritzker Prize and the Royal Institute of British Architects Gold Medal. The news of her passing spurred a number of memorial events and tributes as well as posthumous awards around the globe, including a retrospective of her work running concurrently with this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, and the Aga Khan Award for Architecture for the Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, among many others.Click on the slideshow for an illustrated version of this article. Read more