The Architecture, Culture, and Spirituality Forum (ACSF) is honored to announce that Professor Michael Benedikt has been selected to receive the 2025 ACSF Award for Outstanding Achievement.
Benedikt received the award in June 2025, prior to his death at 78 in August. The Hal Box Chair in Urbanism at the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture, Professor Benedikt devoted nearly fifty years to shaping the field of architecture through a profound commitment to theory, education, and the deeper meanings of design. His influence at the intersection of architecture, culture, and spirituality was broad and profound.
Beginning his tenure at UT Austin in 1975, Professor Benedikt became one of the most significant educators in the field. Generations of students—many of whom are now practicing architects—attest to the lasting inspiration and intellectual rigor they gained under his guidance. Beyond the classroom, his leadership as Director of the Center for American Architecture and Design (CAAD) resulted in the widely acclaimed book series CENTER: Architecture and Design in America, derived from symposia he organized to tackle critical issues in architecture and society.
Professor Benedikt’s scholarship has stood as a testament to his enduring curiosity, clarity of thought, and commitment to exploring the built environment’s spiritual and ethical dimensions. Whether through the philosophical underpinnings of For an Architecture of Reality (1987), the groundbreaking and nearly metaphysical consideration of digital spaces Cyberspace: First Steps (1991), the ethical insights of God Is the Good We Do (2007), or the forward-looking provocations of Architecture Beyond Experience (2020), Benedikt’s vision and arguments invited us to envision and create spaces that nurture the human spirit.In bestowing Michael Benedikt the 2025 ACSF Award for Outstanding Achievement, ACSF celebrates a life’s work that advanced architectural thought and education by expanding our collective imagination of what architecture can mean—as a cultural, ethical, and spiritual force.
