Mark Lamster of The Dallas Morning News has been named the 2026 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Criticism. Lamster won the accolade for his ongoing series about saving Dallas City Hall by I. M. Pei.
Lamster beat out the other nominees Michael J. Lewis of The Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker’s Vinson Cunningham. The jury commended Lamster for “his rigorous and passionate architecture criticism, using wit and expertise to amplify his opinions and advocate for city residents.”
The jury was chaired by Betsy Morais, Columbia Journalism Review editor in chief, and included Lyndsay C. Green (Detroit Free Press), Wesley Morris (The New York Times), Emily Nussbaum (The New Yorker), and Pamela Paul (The Wall Street Journal).
This is the second year in a row the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism has been awarded to an architecture critic. Last year’s Pulitzer Prize in Criticism Winner was Alexandra Lange for her series in Bloomberg about public space and parenting.
Lamster now joins an elite list of past architecture critics to have won the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism including Lange, Ada Louise Huxtable, Robert Campbell, Inga Saffron, Blair Kamin, Justin Davidson, Allan Temko, and Paul Goldberger.
Early in his career Lamster was part of The Gutter, a group of anonymous architecture bloggers that had a “tumultuous 18-month run,” Lamster said in 2009. Lamster first wrote for The Architect’s Newspaper in 2010 and has maintained a relationship with AN over the years.
In 2014, Lamster joined the staff at The Dallas Morning News. It wasn’t exactly a warm welcome: Lamster was criticized for “his Yankee origin.” One critic, Charles Schultz, called Lamster a “New York Pinhead” in the Dallas Observer. (Schultz later apologized.)
Lamster was awarded a Loeb Fellowship in 2017. More recently, he joined Saffron and Mabel Wilson on a panel hosted by AN in 2025 to discuss the latest U.S. Pavilion at the 19th Biennale Architettura.
The Dallas Morning News said Lamster’s Pulitzer Prize is the Texas newspaper’s tenth win in its 140-year history.
AN emailed Lamster for comment.
