Souto de Moura is the 2011 Pritzker Recipient

The selection of Portuguese architect Souto de Moura as this year’s recipient of the world’s highest recognition in the field of architectural design marks a change in direction of the juried selection from an apparent pattern of so-called ‘starchitect’ selections. Over the last few years, the laureates have been internationally recognized designers such as Zaha Hadid, Renzo Piano, Jean Nouvel, Frank Gehry and Peter Zumthor. Souto de Moura is best known for his design of the Paula Rego Museum (photo above) as well as participation in the Serpentine Pavilion of 2005 with Alvaro Siza. AR blogs about why his work was recognized this way.

The Serpentine Pavillion has been the "world stage" for an annual built pavilion design by invited architects, many times in collaboration with world-famous architects, kind of an incubator for international designers run by the British. The Serpentine Gallery, established by the Arts Council of Great Britain, is located in London and constructs a different pavilion each year on the same site by many of the later-crowned Pritzker architects; hence it appears to be the staging area for what is still a closed circle of international designers despite press to the contrary. Serpentine Gallery Projects build dynamic relationships between art, artists and people. Projects and events vary in scale, duration and location, and challenge expectations of where art can be encountered and by whom. These projects invite the public to "encounter" different explorations of architecture and place, such as the work done there by SANAA, the Pritzker Prize laureate from 2010. Peter Zumthor is designing the 2011 pavilion. These projects are like gymnastic exhibitions for designers, since the program is very simply an exhibition space with the designer given a free hand to explore expression and materials. No roof leak challenges for these exercises, but that's not the point.

Interestingly, another arts and architecture gallery, 0III, is on a mission to document places and designs that are not a result of choreographed images in the architectural journals. They support a Blue Plaque Map of London which marks significant locations of important events and structures. They are taking a tangent view of important places that are not restricted to architectural dynamics, but rather meaning of place and its context in history. Yet their contemporary design exhibitions inevitably include these visibly ranked designers once again.

Britain appears to be making a claim to the public realm of design, akin to the Milan International Biennale Trade Fair that is produced throughout Italy every year, except that the Serpentine Pavilion is more purely a design experiment that is gaining prominence on the international stage. The push for design ingenuity and resourcefulness, grounded in the arts, is a welcome change from the marketing and sale of architecture and its branding.

Update: The backstory on the Milan Trade Fair, which was founded in 1961 by Tito Armellini, along with about a dozen other leading furniture manufacturers based near Milan.

Zumthor Wins 2009 Pritzker

Peter Zumthor wins the Pritzker Prize. All the more amazing because he disowns the whole "starchitecture" system.

http://archrecord.construction.com/news/daily/archives/090412pritzker.asp

How does one explain the fascination with Peter Zumthor? It is not because of an architectural style. As the architect himself once said, “It is better not to talk of style but of a particular approach, a specific conscientiousness, in finding the solution to a task.” His projects are few in number, small in size, and located mostly within his own neighborhood, the Swiss Canton of Graubünden, or in Germany, Austria, and Italy. His range is similarly restricted to noncommercial, individual residences or housing groups, and community, religious, or cultural institutions.



Note in the photo above the incorporation of the old remnants with the new work. Like Scarpa, he uses "raw" and indigenous materials rather than manufactured skins and frames. All the way back to the FLLW tradition of local materials, which is a key ingredient of sustainability in architectural design now (avoid embodiment of transported materials and oil-based mfr of building systems like steel and window wall - high energy to produce as well as import). Hopefully someday he will inspire a song, as well.

Slideshow: recent works

http://archrecord.construction.com/news/daily/archives/090412pritzker/2000s/1.asp

Jean Nouvel awarded 2008 Pritzker Prize

From the Los Angeles Times 3/31/08, a quote from Nouvel:

"For me, every building is an adventure," Nouvel said. "Every project is an adventure. I research every project. I talk to a lot of people. Every building has a relationship to the climate, to the wind, to the colors of the buildings around it. I arrive at a concept with all the parameters in place. When I have all of these constraints, I begin. Without constraints, architecture does not exist. You are a sculptor."

Nouvel said he is determined to resist what he views as the homogenization of world urbanism.

"When you go around the world, you see all the same buildings, and you feel like you're in the same place," he said. "I fight all the time for the specificity of architecture. I fight against global architecture. While some architects aim for a standout," Nouvel said," the designs of his buildings are inseparable from their settings."

"I feel like every site has a right to have an architectural aesthetic," he said. "Architects today try to create a little world, a petit monde, a micro monde. It's important to try to create a building in its context. "Every building must be the "missing piece of the puzzle. It must impossible to put the building in another place," he said. "That is my criterion."

An interior video of his ground-breaking Arab Institute in Paris, among others, is here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sapHcCYIFrE&NR=1

It's an adventure going up inside after watching the patterned wall's steel "irises" close down in unison as the sun hits the south wall. Paris, 1997.