English architect, urban planner and activist Sir David Alan Chipperfield CH has been selected as the recipient of the 2023 Pritzker Architecture Prize.
The 2023 Jury Citation of the Laureate, states, in part, “This commitment to an architecture of understated but transformative civic presence and the definition—even through private commissions —of the public realm, is done always with austerity, avoiding unnecessary moves and steering clear of trends and fashions, all of which is a most relevant message to our contemporary society. Such a capacity to distill and perform meditated design operations is a dimension of sustainability that has not been obvious in recent years: sustainability as pertinence, not only eliminates the superfluous but is also the first step to creating structures able to last, physically and culturally.”
Widely considered the highest honour in the profession, the Pritzker Architecture Prize was founded in 1979 by the late Jay A. Pritzker and his wife, Cindy. The Prize is awarded annually to an architect whose body of work demonstrates consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.
Chipperfield expressed his gratitude for the recognition, “I am so overwhelmed to receive this extraordinary honour and to be associated with the previous recipients who have all given so much inspiration to the profession,” remarks Chipperfield. “I take this award as an encouragement to continue to direct my attention not only to the substance of architecture and its meaning but also to the contribution that we can make as architects to address the existential challenges of climate change and societal inequality. We know that, as architects, we can have a more prominent and engaged role in creating not only a more beautiful world but a fairer and more sustainable one too. We must rise to this challenge and help inspire the next generation to embrace this responsibility with vision and courage.”
Since founding his practice, David Chipperfield Architects, in 1984, the masterful urbanist has gone on to produce countless projects renowned for their captivating elegance and acute environmental awareness. Explore some of his most iconic projects below.
The Neues Museum on Berlin’s Museum Island was designed by Friedrich August Stüler and built between 1841 and 1859. Extensive bombing during the Second World War left the building in ruins, with entire sections missin...
The gallery building ‘Am Kupfergraben 10’ is located on the Kupfergraben canal, a prominent site overlooking the Lustgarten and Museum Island in Berlin. It occupies the footprint of a building destroyed in World War I...
The former Bötzow brewery is centrally located in Berlin, just a few minutes’ walk from Alexanderplatz. The masterplan by
The Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin is an icon of twentieth-century architecture. Planned and built from 1963 to 1968, the steel and glass structure is the only building designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in Europe a...
The Museum of Modern Literature is located in Marbach, on a rock plateau overlooking the Neckar River valley. As the birthplace of Friedrich Schiller, the town’s park already held the Schiller National Museum, b...
Chipperfield is the 52nd Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Despite being based in London, he also leads additional offices in Berlin, Milan, Shanghai and Santiago de Compostela. The 2023 Pritzker Prize ceremony will be held in Athens, Greece this May.
