David Chipperfield has received the Pritzker Architecture Prize 2023 in a ceremony held in the ancient Agora of Athens on Wednesday 24 May. The award is regarded internationally as architecture’s highest honour. Founded in 1979 by the late Jay A. Pritzker and his wife, Cindy, the Pritzker Architecture Prize is awarded annually to a living architect whose built work has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.
In its citation, the jury states that “[David Chipperfield’s] 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 distil 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.”
Image © Nikolas Kominis for The Hyatt Foundation/The Pritzker Architecture Prize