Eric Owen Moss was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. He received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California at Los Angeles. He holds Masters Degrees in Architecture from both the University of California at Berkeley, College of Environmental Design and Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. Moss was honoured with the Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1999. He received the AIA/LA Gold Medal in 2001, and was a recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of California, Berkeley in 2003. In 2007, he received the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize, recognising a distinguished history of architectural design. In 2011 he was awarded the Jencks Award by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). In 2014 Moss was featured as a "Game Changer" in Metropolis Magazine, inducted into the National Academy, and received a PA Award for a master plan to revitalise an abandoned rail yard in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 2016, Moss received the Austrian Decoration of Honor for Science and Art. Moss has held teaching positions at major universities around the world including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and the Royal Academy in Copenhagen. Moss has been a longtime professor at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), and served as its director from 2002 to 2015. He received the AIA|LA Educator of the Year in 2006, and the Most Admired Educator Award from the Design Futures Council in 2013.