Washington: Britain's Prince Charles received a top architecture-environment award on the third day of his visit to the United States with his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.
The Prince said he would donate the $25,000 in prize money to help rebuild hurricane-damaged towns in Mississippi.
The money will go to the Foundation for the Built Environment, which has been involved in drawing up plans to rebuild nine communities on the Gulf Coast.
The heir to the British throne was given the Vincent Scully award, an annual prize by the National Building Museum in Washington, to reward "scholarship, or criticism in architecture, landscape architecture, historic preservation, or urban design," an area where the Prince has made a controversial mark.
Professor Vincent Scully, after whom the award is named, praised the courage of the Prince in speaking his mind about architecture and preserving Britain's heritage.
"In the face of implacable opposition from some of the most vocal critics in Britain, and at the grave and constant risk of personal unpopularity, you have revived and sustained the most humane principles of British and American architecture and town making," Scully said.
After accepting the award, Prince Charles gave a passionate 30-minute speech about the environment, outlining his vision of a world in which towns and cities would be built to blend harmoniously with the environment.
Charles and Camilla were in Washington on Thursday, following a formal dinner at the White House on Wednesday at which the Prince made a subtle reference to global warming?a topic Charles is passionate about and on which he disagrees with US President George W Bush.
Their visit to Washington comes 20 years after Charles and his then-wife, the late Princess Diana, dazzled America with the princess waltzing with actor John Travolta at a dinner given by then-president Ronald Reagan.
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