Sir David Chipperfield is the 2023 Pritzker Prize winner

The Pritzker Prize is the highest honor of award in architecture, it’s a dream of every architect around the world to win such an honorable award. It’s an international architecture award presented annually “to honor a living architect whose work/creations demonstrates a combination of qualities like talent, vision and commitment, which has consistently made a significant and impactful contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture. The exclusive award was founded in 1979 by the Pritzker family, Jay A. Pritzker and his wife Cindy, and sponsored by the Hyatt Foundation. In consideration, it’s one of the world’s premier architecture prizes, and is often referred to as the Nobel Prize of architecture.

The Pritzker Architecture Prize has no border as its being awarded to whomever merit it “irrespective of nationality, race, creed, or ideology. The recipients receive US$100,000, a citation certificate and a bronze medallion which was introduced in 1987. The designs on the medal are inspired by the work of architect Louis Sullivan, while the Latin inspired inscription on the reverse of the medallion that means firmness, commodity and delight is from an Ancient Roman architect Vitruvius. Before 1987, a limited edition Henry Moore sculpture accompanied the monetary prize.

Sir David Alan Chipperfield has been awarded the 2023 edition of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the architecture’s highest honor. Last year, Francis Kéré the Burkina Faso born architect whose firm is based in Berlin, Germany became the first black architect to win the prize for his contribution to humanity especially in Africa, while Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal won the award in 2021 for their collaborative practice.

Sir David Alan Chipperfield was born in London in 1953 and raised on a farm in Devon, in the south-west of England. He said that his earliest memories of architecture are from the collection of barns and outbuildings on the farm, which filled him with a sense of nostalgia according to Designboom website. After graduating from the Kingston School of Art in 1976 and the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London in 1980, before founding his firm David Chipperfield Architects in London in 1985, he worked under Douglas Stephen, Norman Foster, the 1999 Pritzker Prize Laureate, and the late Richard Rogers, 2007 Pritzker Prize Laureate.

According to the laureate, as quoted by designboom website, ‘Designing isn’t coming up with colors and shapes,’ the laureate says. ‘It’s about developing a series of questions and ideas which have a certain rigor and consequence to them. And if you can do that, it doesn’t matter which path you go down, as long as you go down the path well and have been consequential in the process.’

Known for his unspeakable designs that are often inspired by traditional building styles, with over forty years exciting career, the English architect’s work can be discovered in cities across the world. His iconic works include the refurbishment of Mies van der Rohe’s iconic Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the Amorepacific Headquarters in Seoul and most recently, his proposal for the National Archaeological Museum of Athens has been selected to expand the largest museum in Greece. Sir David Chipperfield has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Royal Institute of British Architects Royal Gold Medal, the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal and now the Pritzker Architecture Prize.

THE JURY

The Pritzker Prize is conferred in acknowledgment of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which have persistently produced significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture. The career of David Chipperfield is marked by a long term, rigour and consistency in a body of work that has seamlessly integrated and balanced both terms of that equation.

The careful, well-crafted, precise and calm responses he has offered to the goals aspired to in his buildings can only originate in a deep and sustained knowledge of the discipline. Yet, those responses are never self-centred, nor do they serve in any way as art for art’s sake: rather, they always remained focused on the higher purpose of the undertaking and on the pursuit of civic and public good.

David Chipperfield ‘does his job’, and he does it by balancing relevancy and stature. To operate anchored to the body of knowledge of the discipline or architecture requires both intelligence and modesty; to put such knowledge at the service of a given project requires talent and maturity. He has in every case skilfully chosen the tools that are instrumental to the project instead of those that might only celebrate the architect as artist.

Such an approach explains how it is that a gifted architect can sometimes almost disappear when working on the restoration or renovation of existing buildings and architectural masterpieces like those on Berlin’s Museum Island or even more in the case of Mies van der Rohe’s iconic Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. It also explains why the wide spectrum of David Chipperfield’s skills appears in full when he is called upon to create from scratch.

Always characterized by elegance, restraint, a sense of permanence, as well as clear compositions and refined detailing, his buildings each time exude clarity, surprise, sophisticated contextuality and confident presence. In an era of excessive commercialization, over-designing, and over-exaggeration, he can always achieve balance: between a modern minimalistic architectural language and freedom of expression, between abstract statements and rigorous elegance never devoid of complexity. 

Source: Designboom website

Edited by MJ Buildace Magazine