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'Make a building sing'

Rem Koolhaas wins architecture's top award

April 17, 2000
Web posted at: 1:33 p.m. EDT (1733 GMT)

(CNN) -- Architect Rem Koolhaas has always been interested in the relationship between people and the space they occupy. His "Delirious New York" discussed patterns of urban growth, and critics hailed the 1978 book as a must-read on the subject of modern architecture and society.

Since then, Netherlands native Koolhaas' observations and projects have prompted people to label him "iconoclastic," "widely respected" and a "prophet of a new modern architecture."

Now, Koolhaas has a new label: Priztker Prize winner. He is the first Dutchman to win the award, often deemed the "Nobel of architecture prizes." The prize will formally be presented May 29.

  MESSAGE BOARD
 

Koolhaas is due the honor, said Thomas J. Pritzker, whose late father, Chicago hotelier and businessman Jay A. Pritzker, founded the prize in 1979 and administered it through the Hyatt Foundation.

"It seems fitting that as we begin a new millennium, the jury should choose an architect that seems so in tune with the future," said Pritzker, chairman of the foundation, in a statement released Monday.

'Intriguing array' of projects

The prize, $100,000 and a bronze medallion, will be presented this year at Jerusalem's Archaeological Park. It is awarded at a different international spot each year to highlight different contemporary and traditional architectural styles.

Koolhaas' "restless mind, conceptual brilliance, and ability to make a building sing" have earned him a place in contemporary design, said J. Carter Brown, the jury's chairman, in a press statement.

Rem Koolhaas  

In citing Koohaas' accomplishments, the Pritzker jury pointed out several of his completed projects in Europe, including the Educatorium at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and Grand Palais in Lille, France.

Jurors also cited another Koolhaas original -- a home for a wheelchair-bound man in Bordeaux, France. The three-section house, which Time magazine named the best design of 1998, features a glass room that acts as an elevator between the top and bottom living quarters.

His work will be reaching new audiences, too. Koolhaas has a number of projects commissioned in the United States, including buildings in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and a central public library in Seattle.

"Koolhaas has amassed an intriguing array of brilliant projects that continually blur the line between urban design and architecture," said Bill Lacy, executive director of the Hyatt Foundation and a Pritzker juror, in Monday's prepared statements.

Functioning contradictions

Fellow juror Jorge Silvetti, in his prepared statement, noted the contradictions of Koolhaas' work.

"He is not a formalist, yet he creates form," said Silvetti. "He is not a functionalist, yet programs are the generators of his solutions; he is not a theoretician, yet ideas dominate his work."

Koolhaas was born in Rotterdam in 1944. After spending his youth in the Netherlands and Indonesia, he worked as a journalist and tried his hand at screenwriting before enrolling in the Architecture Association School in London in 1968.

By 1975, he was working in New York at his own firm, the Office of Metropolitan Architecture. Since 1995, he also has taught at Harvard University.



RELATED STORIES:
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'Just downright beautiful' work earns Sir Norman Foster architecture's top honor
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RELATED SITES:
Pritzker Prize
'GreatBuildings.com: Rem Koolhaas
Seattle Times: The hiring of Rem Koolhaas - June 16, 1999


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