Royal Institute of British Architects in the context of "66 Portland Place"

Decimus Burton (30 September 1800 – 14 December 1881) was one of the foremost English architects and landscapers of the 19th century. He was the foremost Victorian architect in the Roman Revival, Greek Revival, Georgian neoclassical and Regency styles. He was a founding fellow and vice-president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and from 1840 architect to the Royal Botanic Society, and an early member of the Athenaeum Club, London, whose clubhouse he designed and which the company of his father, James Burton, the pre-eminent Georgian London property developer, built.

Burton's works are Hyde Park, London (including the gate or screen of Hyde Park Corner, the Wellington Arch, and the Gates); Green Park and St James's Park; Regent's Park (including Cornwall Terrace, York Terrace, Clarence Terrace, Chester Terrace, and the villas of the Inner Circle which include his own mansion, The Holme, and the original Winfield House); the enclosure of the forecourt of Buckingham Palace from which he had Nash's Marble Arch moved; the clubhouse of the Athenaeum Club, London; Carlton House Terrace; Spring Gardens in St. James's; and the Palm House and the Temperate House at Kew Gardens. Burton designed the seaside towns of St Leonards-on-Sea, Fleetwood, and Folkestone, and also Royal Tunbridge Wells. His Calverley Estate (of which only a small proportion survives) was highly commended.

Alfred Waterhouse RA PPRIBA (19 July 1830 – 22 August 1905) was an English architect, particularly associated with Gothic Revival architecture, although he designed using other architectural styles as well. He is perhaps best known for his designs for Manchester Town Hall and the Natural History Museum in London. He designed other town halls, the Manchester Assize buildings—bombed in World War II—and the adjacent Strangeways Prison. He also designed several hospitals, the most architecturally interesting being the Royal Infirmary Liverpool and University College Hospital London. He was particularly active in designing buildings for universities, including both Oxford and Cambridge but also what became Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds universities. He designed many country houses, the most important being Eaton Hall in Cheshire. He designed several bank buildings and offices for insurance companies, most notably the Prudential Assurance Company. Although not a major church designer he produced several notable churches and chapels.

Financially speaking, Waterhouse was probably the most successful of all Victorian architects. He designed some of the most expensive buildings of the Victorian age. The three most costly were Manchester Town Hall, Eaton Hall and the Natural History Museum; they were also among the largest buildings of their type built during the period. Waterhouse had a reputation for being able to plan logically laid out buildings, often on awkward or cramped sites. He built soundly constructed buildings, having built up a well structured and organised architectural office, and used reliable sub-contractors and suppliers. His versatility in stylistic matters also attracted clients. Though expert within Neo-Gothic, Renaissance Revival and Romanesque Revival styles, Waterhouse never limited himself to a single architectural style. He often used eclecticism in his buildings. Styles that he used occasionally include Tudor revival, Jacobethan, Italianate, and some only once or twice, such as Scottish baronial architecture, Baroque Revival, Queen Anne style architecture and Neoclassical architecture.

Major-General Richard Clement Moody FICE FRGS RIBA (13 February 1813 – 31 March 1887) was a British Governor and Commander of the Royal Engineers. He was the founder and the first Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia, in which he owned more than 3049 acres of land.

He was also Commanding Executive Officer of Malta during the Crimean War; and was the first British Governor of the Falkland Islands, of which he founded their capital Port Stanley, Moody Brook, and Moody Point in Antarctica.

Harold Ainsworth Peto FRIBA (11 July 1854 – 16 April 1933) was a British architect, landscape architect and garden designer, who worked in Britain and in Provence, France. Among his best-known gardens are Iford Manor, Wiltshire; Buscot Park, Oxfordshire; West Dean House, Sussex; and Ilnacullin, County Cork, Ireland.

Charles John Phipps FSA (25 March 1835 – 25 May 1897) was an English architect known for more than forty theatres he designed in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

He began his own practice in his native Bath in 1857, designing buildings and furniture in the Gothic Revival style. In 1862 he gained his first theatre commission, the Theatre Royal, Bath, which generally retaining the Georgian character of the original theatre on the site. He moved to London in 1868, where he designed a variety of non-theatrical buildings, including the Royal Institute of British Architects’ own premises.

Sir Arnold Thornely (7 October 1870 – 1 October 1953) was an English architect who practised in Liverpool. Although most of his designs were for buildings in Liverpool and the northwest of England, he is best known for the Parliament Buildings in Belfast, Northern Ireland (commonly known as Stormont). Thornely was knighted in 1932, and in the following year received the Bronze Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects for Ulster.

Grimshaw Architects (formerly Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners) is an architectural firm based in London. Founded in 1980 by Nicholas Grimshaw, the firm was one of the pioneers of high-tech architecture. In particular, they are known for their design of transport projects including Amsterdam Bijlmer ArenA railway station, Waterloo International railway station and the award-winning Southern Cross railway station which was the recipient of the Royal Institute of British Architects Lubetkin Prize. Grimshaw is behind the design of the Sustainability Pavilion, an innovative net-zero building, for Expo 2020. The firm currently has offices in Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Dubai, Melbourne and Sydney, employing over 600 staff.

The Royal Gold Medal for architecture is awarded annually by the Royal Institute of British Architects on behalf of the British monarch, in recognition of an individual's or group's substantial contribution to international architecture. It is given for a distinguished body of work rather than for one building and is therefore not awarded for merely being currently fashionable.

The medal was first awarded in 1848 to Charles Robert Cockerell, and its second recipient was the Italian Luigi Canina in 1849. The winners include some of the most influential architects of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1864), Frank Lloyd Wright (1941), Le Corbusier (1953), Walter Gropius (1956), Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1959) and Buckminster Fuller (1968). Candidates of all nationalities are eligible to receive the award.

Portland Place is a street in the Marylebone district of central London. Named after the 3rd Duke of Portland, the unusually wide street is home to the BBC's headquarters Broadcasting House, the Chinese and Polish embassies, the Royal Institute of British Architects and numerous residential mansion blocks.