David Chipperfield has been named the 2023 winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, architecture’s most prestigious award. The jury praised his “subtle and powerful” body of work that spans over 40 years of his more than 100 projects in Asia, Europe and North America.
Sir David Alan Chipperfield was born in London but grew up on a farm in the countryside of Devon in South West England. There he was very impressed with the architecture, the collection of barns and outbuildings.
He attended and graduated from the Institute of Architecture School of Architecture in London in 1980. Then in 1985 David He worked under Douglas Stephen and Pritzker Prize winner Norman Foster and the late Richard Rogers before founding Chipperfield He Architects.
“I think good architecture provides an environment. It exists and it doesn’t,” Chipperfield said in a statement. “Like all things of great significance, they are both the foreground and the background, and I have not always been so fascinated by the foreground. Architecture enhances our rituals and our lives, It is something that can support and help. What I am drawn to and enjoy most is when the ordinary becomes extraordinary as opposed to when everything is special.
“Design is not about coming up with colors and shapes, it is about developing a set of questions and ideas that have a certain rigor and outcome. , as long as they produce results in the process.”
Richard Bryant/Arcade
Located on the south bank of the River Thames, the River and Rowing Museum is a highlight of Chipperfield’s early work and marks the first building completed in his native England in 1997. spin.
Its pitched roof is inspired by river boathouses and traditional Oxfordshire timber barns, clad in green English oak that naturally weathers over time. Two structures with clear glass bases, raised above concrete pillars to withstand the site’s occasional flooding, offer modernity and ensure interior openness and daylight.
Ivan Byrne
Hepworth Wakefield, completed in 2011, is another standout. Located in Yorkshire’s historic waterfront reserve on the Calder River bend, the museum consists of 10 interlocking trapezoids.
Accessible only by footbridge, the building appears to tower over the river. The river also serves as a source of passive air systems to assist with heating and cooling. Its interior is a masterclass in natural light, with carefully considered, intentional and diffused sunlight ensuring illumination while protecting the delicate works inside.
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Completed in 2017, Amorepacific Headquarters is a recent example of Chipperfield’s approach to architecture. Created for a South Korean beauty company, the Seoul building takes the form of a giant cube that combines office space, a public atrium, a museum, a library and a restaurant.
Its eye-catching façade features vertical aluminum fins atop a glass façade to provide solar shading. In addition, three large openings lead to a large courtyard space that is rich in greenery and helps maximize ventilation and daylight throughout the building.
“This commitment to an architecture of understated but transformative civic presence and definition of the public sphere (even through private commissions) eschews unnecessary movements, eschews trends and fashions, and always stays austere. All of these are the most relevant messages to our contemporary society,” said the Pritzker Prize jury. “Such an ability to distill and carry out meditative design work is an aspect of sustainability that has not been apparent in recent years. It is also the first step in creating a culturally sustainable structure.”
More examples of Chipperfield’s work can be seen in our gallery.
Source: Pritzker Prize
