Parisian Architect Is Named 1994 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize
Christian de Portzamparc, a 50 year-old French architect who lives and works in Paris, has been named the seventeenth Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. The Hyatt Foundation jury described Portzamparc as "a powerful poet of forms and creator of eloquent spaces," in announcing him as the sixth European architect to be selected for his profession's highest honor.
Jay A. Pritzker, president of The Hyatt Foundation, which established the award in 1979, will present Portzamparc with a $100,000 grant and a bronze medal at a ceremony to be held June 14 in Columbus, Indiana—a community that boasts more buildings by world-renowned architects than any other small town. In making the announcement, Pritzker praised the choice of the jury, saying, "Portzamparc is the first French architect to be so honored. It is not only a tribute to him as an individual, but an homage as well, to the great architectural traditions of France, and particularly Le Corbusier who has forever influenced architecture everywhere."
Bill Lacy, secretary to the international panel of jurors that elects the Laureate each year, quoted from the formal citation from the jury: "Christian de Portzamparc's new architecture is of our time, bound neither by classicism nor modernism. His expanded perceptions and ideas seek answers beyond mere style. He is a part of a new generation of French architects who have incorporated the lessons of the Beaux Arts into an exuberant collage of contemporary architectural idioms, at once bold, colorful and original." Lacy, who is an architect himself and president of the State University of New York at Purchase, elaborated, "Every architect who aspires to greatness must in some sense reinvent architecture; conceive new solutions; develop a special design character; find a new aesthetic vocabulary. Portzamparc has an unusually clear and consistent vision, devising highly original spaces that serve a variety of functions."
Portzamparc, who was born in Casablanca, Morocco while his father served in the French Army there, completed his architectural degree at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris in 1969. His first commission was for a water tower in a new community, Marne-La-Vallee, located approximately 20 miles east of Paris. The water tower is unique in that it has an outer skin offine mesh open trellis work covered with climbing plants, and is modeled after the Tower of Babel. Its location in the center of town at a crossroads makes it a focal point.
Most of his completed projects are in France, the most widely publicized being the City of Music, a new music academy in the Parisian suburban park, La Villette. It is one of the Grands Projets of President Mitterrand, a program of commissioning new buildings which has stimulated an architectural renaissance in his country. The first phase of the project was completed in 1991, and the final phase is scheduled to open in January.