We welcome the Pritzker Prize-winning architect, Rafael Moneo, to deliver the inaugural Soane Annual Lecture.

The Sir John Soane’s Museum has created a series of talks and medal that recognise architects, artists, writers and others whose work has broadened and enriched understandings of architecture and the built environment.

The inaugural Soane Annual Lecture will be delivered by the distinguished Spanish architect, Rafael Moneo, who has devoted his career to teaching, writing and practice. Moneo’s career has embodied the idea of architecture as something that resides not just in the structure and the materials of a building, but in time and place, word and image, people and community. His most famous works include the National Museum of Art in Merida, the extension to Prado Museum in Madrid, and the City Hall in Murcia.

The Soane Annual Lecture continues the mission established by the Museum’s founder. Since he bequeathed his house to the nation 180 years ago, Sir John Soane’s Museum has played a special role in architecture, and in London, as a place to provoke and inspire everyone – young and old, architects or not – to consider the possibilities of architecture to shape our environment in an immediate, understandable way.

Given the scarcity of open public debate about the shape of our built environment, the new Soane Annual Lecture and Medal is an opportunity to fill this gap and bring the spirit embedded in the Museum to our contemporary condition and a wider audience.