The five experts who make up the jury of the National Building Museum’s Vincent Scully Prize can spend hours debating the merits of as many as 40 nominees in order to determine a winner who represents “intellectual accomplishment in architecture and an instrumental role in dialogue,” says David M. Schwarz, FAIA, the jury’s chair since the program’s inception a decade ago. For the 2008 laureate, Schwarz says, the jurors made their selection “in just 20 minutes.”

Robert A.M. Stern, FAIA, was the subject of this brief discussion. Stern, as well as the decade anniversary of the Vincent Scully Prize, will be feted in a series of events this coming November. Stern says he will donate the $45,000 in prize money to Yale University, where he has served as the dean of the architecture school since 1998. The award’s namesake, Vincent J. Scully, has taught art and architectural history at Yale since 1949.