Usually, the AIA’s 25 Year Award — the American Institute of Architects’ prize for middle-aged rather than newborn architecture (by human standards), granted to an exceptional, enduring edifice between 25 and 35 years old — goes to a building. Past recipients include Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building (1984) and Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute (1990), but this year’s laureate isn’t even a building: the entirety of Washington D.C.’s Brutalist subway system, designed byHarry Weese from 1966 on, just took the prize, reports Gizmodo.

“The striking design of the prototypical Washington Metro station revolutionized public perceptions of mass transit in the mid-to-late 20th century,” commented the AIA jury, explaining its decision. Weese’s work in D.C. is also notable for its ability to expand with the city; “Here was a guy who, in the early 1970s, had the foresight to create a modular kit-of parts that worked not only for the five D.C. Metro stations that opened in 1976, but also for the 78 other stations that were designed since—some of them, after Weese himself had already died,” writes Kelsey Dollagahn-Campbell. Perhaps the only other subway system as expansive and aesthetically cohesive (and spotlessly clean) as Weese’s in Washington D.C. is Stalin’s 1935 Moscow metro — how fitting.