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For publication on
or after Monday, March 21, 2005 |
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California
Architect Thom Mayne
Becomes the 2005
Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate |
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Los Angeles, CA—Thom Mayne, who founded
his firm Morphosis to surpass the bounds of traditional forms and
materials, while also working to carve out a territory beyond the
limits of modernism and postmodernism, has been chosen as the 2005
Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. The Pritzker
Prize caps a three-decade career in which Mayne has received 54 AIA
Awards, some 25 Progressive Architecture Awards, as well as numerous
other honors around the world. The sixty-one year old architect is
the first American Laureate in 14 years.
Mayne’s most recent built works to capture major media
attention include the Caltrans District 7 Headquarters and the
Science Education Resource Center / Science Center School, both
completed in 2004 in Los Angeles.
Mayne has numerous other Southern California landmarks:
the Diamond Ranch High School in Pomona, two Salick Medical Office buildings on
Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles, and several distinctive private
residences.
Mayne is also currently working on the Cahill Center for
Astrophysics at the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.
Nationally,
Mayne is completing three projects of major importance for the
United
States General Services Administration’s Design Excellence program
including a Federal Office Building in San Francisco, California,
the Wayne
L. Morse United States Courthouse in Eugene, Oregon, and the NOAA
Satellite Operation Control Facility in Suitland, Maryland.
Two major competitions in New York City were also recently awarded
to his firm: the New Academic Building for The Cooper Union for the
Advancement of Science and Art; and the NYC2012 Olympic Village, a
project in association with NYC’s bid for the 2012 Olympics.
His most recent commission, granted just this month as the result of
a
winning competition design is for the new Alaska State Capitol
building to
be constructed in Juneau, Alaska.
On the world stage, he has the Hypo Alpe-Adria Center in Klagenfurt,
Austria; the ASE Design Center in Taipei, Taiwan; the Sun Tower in
Seoul,
South Korea; and a Social Housing project slated for completion next
year
in Madrid, Spain.
Throughout his career, Mayne has remained active in the academic
world. He currently holds a tenured professorship at the University
of
California in Los Angeles and is a founder of the influential and
progressive
Southern California Institute of Architecture. He has been a
visiting
professor and/or lecturer at institutions and universities around
the world.
In announcing the jury’s choice, Thomas J. Pritzker, president of
The
Hyatt Foundation, said, “When this prize was founded in 1979, Thom
Mayne had just received his Master of Architecture degree from
Harvard
the year before. The intervening years have seen 28 Laureates
chosen. Thom
Mayne is the twenty-ninth, and only the eighth American to be so
honored.”
The formal ceremony for what has come to be known throughout the
world as architecture’s highest honor will be held on May 31, 2005
in
Chicago’s Millennium Park in the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, a structure
named
for the founder of the prize and designed by juror and 1989 Pritzker
Laureate, Frank Gehry. At that time, a $100,000 grant and a bronze
medallion will be bestowed.
Lord Palumbo, beginning his term as Pritzker Jury Chairman, spoke of
the jury’s choice, “Every now and then an architect appears on the
international scene, who teaches us to look at the art of
architecture with
fresh eyes, and whose work marks him out as a man apart in the
originality
and exuberance of its vocabulary, the richness and diversity of its
palette, the
risks undertaken with confidence and brio, the seamless fusion of
art and
technology.”
Bill Lacy, an architect, speaking as the executive director of the
Pritzker
Prize, quoted from the jury citation which states, “Thom Mayne is a
product
of the turbulent 60’s who has carried that rebellious attitude and
fervent
desire for change into his practice, the fruits of which are only
now becoming
visible in a group of large scale projects."
Frank Gehry, in his capacity as Pritzker Juror, said, “I was
thrilled that our
new laureate hails from my part of the world. I’ve known him for a
long
time, watched him grow into a mature and, I like to say, ‘authentic’
architect.
He continues to explore and search for new ways to make buildings
useable
and exciting.”
Ada Louise Huxtable, architecture critic and member of the jury,
commented further saying, “The work of Thom Mayne moves architecture
from the 20th to the 21st century in its use of today’s art and
technology to
create a dynamic style that expresses and serves today’s needs.”
Another juror, Carlos Jimenez from Houston who is professor of
architecture at Rice University, said, “Thom Mayne’s work
exemplifies an
astonishing level of consistency and conviction. The dynamics of
this
focused pursuit do not result in predictable or rarefied
architecture, but
produce an architecture that invites us to be full participants and
recipients
of the architect’s abundant inventiveness. In the process we come to
experience architecture anew: from how it is imagined to how it is
drawn, to
how it is constructed and becomes a collective experience.”
And from juror Victoria Newhouse, architectural historian, author,
and
founder and director of the Architectural History Foundation, “I
feel that in
the past few years Thom Mayne’s work has shown an impressive
development,
from being merely good to being outstanding. Diamond Ranch High
School (2000) was for me the benchmark. I visited it the year of its
completion and found not only the original design admirable, but the
way
in which the architect adapted that design to the government’s
financial
limitations was ingenious.”
Juror Karen Stein, who is editorial director of Phaidon Press in New
York, commented, “Thom Mayne sees architecture as a contact sport —
a
group activity that pushes physical limits, in this case of form
making. From
his earliest complex, multi-layered drawings to his more recent
completed
buildings, he has used the latest technologies as both theme and
apparatus
of his designs, creating a body of work that has consistently
explored and
expressed architecture as a risk-taking, visceral experience.”
The purpose of the Pritzker Architecture Prize is to honor annually
a
living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of
those
qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produced
consistent
and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment
through
the art of architecture.
The distinguished jury that selected Mayne as the 2005 Laureate
consists
of its chairman, Lord Palumbo, chairman of the Serpentine Gallery
Trustees,
former chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain and well known
as an
art and architectural patron; and alphabetically: Balkrishna
Vithaldas Doshi,
Architect, Planner and Professor of Architecture of Ahmedabad,
India;
Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman of Vitra, Basel, Switzerland;
Frank Gehry, architect and 1989 Pritzker Laureate; Ada Louise
Huxtable,
author and architectural critic of New York; Carlos Jimenez,
professor at
Rice University School of Architecture, and principal, Carlos
Jimenez
Studio in Houston, Texas; Victoria Newhouse, architectural historian
and
author who founded and is the director of the Architectural History
Foundation in New York; and Karen Stein, editorial director of
Phaidon
Press in New York.
The prize presentation ceremony moves to different locations around
the world each year, paying homage to historic and contemporary
architecture. Last year, the ceremony was held in the State
Hermitage
Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. The year before in Madrid, Spain
in the
Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. Michelangelo’s Campidoglio
in Rome, Italy was the location in 2000. In 2002, Thomas Jefferson’s
home,
Monticello, in Charlottesville, Virginia was the venue. In 2000, the
ceremony
was held in Jerusalem in the Archaeological Park surrounding the
Dome of
the Rock.
The late Philip Johnson was the first Pritzker Laureate in 1979. The
late
Luis Barragán of Mexico was named in 1980. The late James Stirling
of
Great Britain was elected in 1981, Kevin Roche in 1982, Ieoh Ming
Pei in
1983, and Richard Meier in 1984. Hans Hollein of Austria was the
1985
Laureate. Gottfried Böhm of Germany received the prize in 1986.
Kenzo
Tange was the first Japanese architect to receive the prize in 1987;
Fumihiko
Maki was the second from Japan in 1993; and Tadao Ando the third in
1995. Robert Venturi received the honor in 1991, and Alvaro Siza of
Portugal in 1992. Christian de Portzamparc of France was elected
Pritzker
Laureate in 1994. The late Gordon Bunshaft of the United States and
Oscar
Niemeyer of Brazil, were named in 1988. Frank Gehry was the recipient in
1989, the late Aldo Rossi of Italy in 1990. In 1996, Rafael Moneo of
Spain
was the Laureate; in 1997 Sverre Fehn of Norway; in 1998 Renzo Piano
of
Italy, in 1999 Sir Norman Foster of the UK, and in 2000, Rem
Koolhaas of
the Netherlands. In 2001, two architects from Switzerland received
the
honor: Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. The 2002 laureate was
Australian Glenn Murcutt. In 2003, Jørn Utzon of Denmark was chosen
and last year, the first woman to be selected was Zaha Hadid of the
UK.
The field of architecture was chosen by the Pritzker family because
of
their keen interest in building due to their involvement with developing the
Hyatt Hotels around the world; also because architecture was a
creative
endeavor not included in the Nobel Prizes. The procedures were
modeled
after the Nobels, with the final selection being made by the
international jury
with all deliberations and voting in secret. Nominations are
continuous from
year to year with hundreds of nominees from countries all around the
world
being considered each year. |
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Portraits of Thom Mayne
Portraits of Thom Mayne / Photos by Mark Hanauer |
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Click either portrait to download a high
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The Jury |
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CHAIRMAN
The Lord Palumbo
Architectural Patron
Chairman of the Trustees, Serpentine Gallery
Former Chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain
Former Chairman of the Tate Gallery Foundation
Former Trustee of the Mies van der Rohe Archive at the Museum of
Modern Art, New York
London, England |
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Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi
Architect, Planner and Professor of Architecture
Ahmedabad, India |
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Rolf Fehlbaum
Chairman of Vitra
Basel, Switzerland |
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Frank Gehry
Architect and Pritzker Laureate 1989
Los Angeles, California |
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Ada Louise Huxtable
Author and Architecture Critic of the Wall Street Journal
New York, New York |
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Carlos Jimenez
Professor, Rice University School of Architecture
Principal, Carlos Jimenez Studio
Houston, Texas |
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Victoria Newhouse
Architectural Historian and Author
Founder and Director of the Architectural History Foundation
New York, New York |
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EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Bill Lacy
Architect
San Antonio, Texas |
Karen Stein
Editorial Director
Phaidon Press
New York, New York |
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Citation from the Jury |
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Morphosis, the name of Thom Mayne’s firm,
means “to be in formation,” and is a particularly apt description of
this architect’s professional career journey and struggle. Until the
mid-80’s he was a largely unknown, revolutionary young West Coast
architect with an Architecture degree from the University of
Southern California, a Master’s degree from Harvard, and a great
deal of promise. The firm was known primarily to aficionados and
students of architecture for a few exceptional small projects — two
pace-setting restaurants, a residence, and a medical clinic. All
that was destined to change. Having survived a dearth of projects in
the early 90’s, Mayne stormed into the new century with a vengeance
and began to win competitions and commissions for ever more
important projects, all noted for their audacious character, bold
designs, and originality — both in their form and in their use of
materials. Mayne’s distinguished honors include the Rome Prize
Fellowship from the American Academy of Design in Rome (1987),
Member Elect from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1992),
the 2000 American Institute of Architects/Los Angeles Gold Medal in
Architecture, and the Chrysler Design Award of Excellence (2001).
Thom Mayne is a product of the turbulent 60’s who has carried that
rebellious attitude and fervent desire for change into his practice,
the fruits of which are only now becoming visible in a group of
large scale projects including the Student Recreation Center at the
University of Cincinnati, a federal courthouse in Eugene, Oregon, a
new art and engineering building for the venerable Cooper Union in
Manhattan, and the mammoth headquarters building for California’s
Department of Transportation (District 7) in Los Angeles.
Mayne’s approach toward architecture and his philosophy is not
derived from European modernism, Asian influences, or even from
American precedents of the last century. He has sought throughout
his career to create an original architecture, one that is truly
representative of the unique, somewhat rootless, culture of Southern
California, especially the architecturally rich city of Los Angeles.
Like the Eameses, Neutra, Schindler, and Gehry before him, Thom
Mayne is an authentic addition to the tradition of innovative,
exciting architectural talent that flourishes on the West Coast.
Following the firm’s early projects and his role in founding an
unorthodox school of architecture, “SCI-ARC,” he and his partner in
Morphosis, Michael Rotondi, separated and Mayne entered a period of
few built projects, which tested his mettle, determination and
passion for his chosen profession. Gradually, however, clients both
public and private began to acknowledge and be attracted to Mayne’s
bold forms, original palette of materials and design authenticity.
Mayne has now moved to the front ranks of the profession. He is a
vigorous participant in many design competitions world-wide, winning
the firm’s fair share. Additionally, through lectures,
writings, and his professorship at UCLA he has become a spokesman
for architecture, a mentor and example to the younger generation of
architects.
For having the qualities
that superbly match the credo of the Prize – “talent, vision, and
commitment to furthering the art of architecture,” and for an
outstanding body of work and future promise, the Pritzker
Architecture Prize Jury is pleased to award Thom Mayne the 2005
Pritzker Architecture Prize.
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Note to editors: The
following are some additional comments
from individual Pritzker Prize Jurors: |
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| “Every now and then an architect appears on the international
scene, who teaches us to look at the art of architecture with fresh
eyes, and whose work marks him out as a man apart in the originality
and exuberance of its vocabulary, the richness and diversity of its
palette, the risks undertaken with confidence and brio, the seamless
fusion of art and technology. Thom Mayne is such an artist.He
fulfills admirably the words of the great Chicago architect, Mies
van der Rohe, who said, ‘Architecture is the will of an epoch
translated into space, living, changing, new.’ For these reasons,
Thom Mayne is a worthy recipient of this year’s Pritzker
Architecture Prize.” Lord Palumbo, Pritzker Jury
Chairman
“The work of Thom Mayne moves architecture from the
20th to the 21st century in its use of today’s art and technology to
create a dynamic style that expresses and serves today’s needs.”
Ada Louise Huxtable, Pritzker Juror
"Thom Mayne’s work exemplifies an astonishing level
of consistency and conviction. The dynamics of this focused pursuit
do not result in predictable or rarefied architecture, but produce
an architecture that invites us to be full participants and
recipients of the architect’s abundant inventiveness. In the process
we come to experience architecture anew: from how it is imagined to
how it is drawn, to how it is constructed and becomes a collective
experience."
Carlos Jimenez, Pritzker Juror
“I was thrilled that our new laureate hails from my
part of the world. I’ve known him for a long time, watched him grow
into a mature and, I like to say, ‘authentic’ architect. He
continues to explore and search for new ways to make buildings
useable and exciting.”
Frank Gehry, Pritzker Juror
"I feel that in the past few years Thom Mayne’s work
has shown an impressive development, from being merely good to being
outstanding. Diamond Ranch High School (2000) was for me the
benchmark. I visited it the year of its completion and found not
only the original design admirable, but the way in which the
architect adapted that design to the government’s financial
limitations was ingenious.
“His design for commissions that came after this looked promising,
but it was my visit to his
Hypo Alpe-Adria Center, completed in 2002 that convinced me of his
remarkable talent.
Additionally, images of the new Caltran headquarters Building
reinforced this conviction.”
Victoria Newhouse, Pritzker Juror
“Thom Mayne sees architecture as a contact sport — a
group activity that pushes physical limits, in this case of form
making. From his earliest complex, multi-layered drawings to his
more recent completed buildings, he has used the latest technologies
as both theme and apparatus of his designs, creatinga body of work
that has consistently explored and expressed architecture as a
risk-taking, visceral experience.”
Karen Stein, Pritzker Juror |
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...About Thom Mayne |
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“We will hold to that which is difficult, because it is
difficult…and by its difficulty is worthwhile.” That’s a quote from
architect Thom Mayne in a monograph about his firm, Morphosis, which
he founded in 1972 in Los Angeles. The thought expressed is rather
typical of a man who has achieved distinction throughout the world
as a theorist, author, teacher, and last, but by no means least, as
an architect. His stature is even more enhanced as the recipient of
the 2005 Pritzker Architecture Prize.
As stated in the Pritzker Jury’s citation, “Mayne’s
approach toward architecture and his philosophy is not derived from
European modernism, Asian influences, or even from American
precedents of the last century. He has sought throughout his career
to create an original architecture, one that is truly representative
of the unique, somewhat rootless, culture of Southern California,
especially the architecturally rich city of Los Angeles. Like the
Eameses, Neutra, Schindler, and Gehry before him, Thom Mayne is an
authentic addition to the tradition of innovative, exciting
architectural talent that flourishes on the West Coast.”
When Mayne received the call on his cell phone from the Pritzker
Prize executive director, Bill Lacy, he was in a cab crossing the
Triborough Bridge in New York on his way to the airport. “When he
told me I had been selected as the 2005 Laureate, I was speechless.
This is such a big deal, and due to certain aspects of my
upbringing, it is not in my nature to think about being the one who
prevails…For my whole life I’ve always seen myself as an outsider.”
That hardly sounds like the man that some in the media have called
“a bad boy of architecture,” so an exploration of that “upbringing”
is in order.
Thom Mayne was born in
Waterbury, Connecticut in 1944. His family moved to Gary, Indiana
when he was an infant where his mother and father subsequently
divorced. When he was ten, his mother moved the family to an area
south of Whittier, California where he and his younger brother could
be nearer to his maternal grandmother. He characterized the place as
“the middle of nowhere with orange groves and avocado trees.”
Economically, the family was quite poor. “My mother, whose father
was a Methodist minister, had studied in Chicago and Paris,” he
explains, “She was a pianist, and had actually appeared with her
sister in recital at Carnegie Hall, but then she got married and
gave up her musical life to focus on her children. When the
separation came, she was not equipped to support a family….she was a
creative person, a person with a musician’s temperament. She tried
teaching, but that didn’t work so she went to work in a series of
support jobs in various fields.”
Mayne continues, “But my mother was completely cultured. I grew up
on classical music, and reproductions of great art. As a result, I
grew up as a citykid in the suburbs, not an athlete, not a joiner.
Anyway, I was completely out of place in Whittier. My first day of
school, my bike and jacket were taken and I was beaten up. I was
arranging flowers at ten, re-working the landscape of our house at
twelve. The aesthetic stuff was definitely not what boys did. As a
result, I became kind of a loner, and aloof. I didn’t really have a
family then because my mom was never around. Now, I have a lovely
family. My wife is so, really luscious. She really knows me, and
understands completely that I can be an extremely self-critical
person because of all the challenges in my life. We both get that
the self-critical part is also the engine that drives the
creativity…” His family includes three sons, one (Richard Mayne) by
a previous marriage who is grown and has a family of his own, and
two younger children, Sam aged 21 and Cooper 17.
According to Mayne, he managed to survive high school in Whittier.
When he headed off to college initially, it was by bus to Cal Poly
in Pomona. By his account, “When I got off the bus, the first people
I saw were three girls riding by on horses. I was shocked…The city
boy in me really came out, and I got right back on the bus to LA,
and went over to USC. They had an accomplished group of
practitioners in the architecture school then, Craig Ellwood,
Gregory Ain, Ray Kappe, Ralph Knowles and others. I had won a
competition for a house I designed in my Architectural Drafting
class in High School so I had an attraction to the field of
architecture….but not much of a clue what it meant to practice.
Anyway, they accepted me, and for the first time I found a world
that seemed to fit.”
And the rest is
history, or at least one could jump to that conclusion based on the
preponderance of commissions awarded to Morphosis in the last few
years. But there is more to the story of Thom Mayne.
When he finished USC, he went to work as a planner for Victor Gruen
for two years. Then he started teaching at Pomona, but soon he and
six of his colleagues, including the director, were fired. “We were
young, committed and convinced that we could re-think where
architecture was headed so when we got fired, we decided to start
our own school. We sensed that it was the right time to initiate a
radical alternative to the conventional educational system,” Mayne
recounts. That was the genesis of the Southern California Institute
of Architecture (SCI-Arc). They took forty of the students from
Pomona with them and started the school. “We made no money, we
worked for nothing,” says Mayne, “I was working ten hours a day
teaching, doing little gigs on the side, consulting, to survive. And
I was living in Venice, over a bait and tackle shop, maybe $100 a
month rent. You could live really simply then. All of a sudden, four
years of my life had gone by, and I’m running a graduate program.
Eventually, in 1978 I took a sabbatical and entered the graduate
program at Harvard”.
It was that
year at Harvard that gave him time to reassess his career. “By that
time it had become clear to me that my interests were leading me
away from planning…it just wasn’t tangible enough… toward
architecture. …. By the end of ’79, I got back to Los Angeles, and
boom, boom, I started receiving residential commissions. I realized
what a unique city LA is for practicing architecture (Frank Gehry
had just finished his house), how open it is to experimentation.
Unbeknownst to all of us, the Los Angeles architecture scene was
becoming interesting at a global level.”
Morphosis came into being in 1972 during the first year of SCI-arc’s
history. “It really wasn’t an office, it was an idea” says Mayne.
“We had no work. We didn’t think of having work, it had to do with
an interdisciplinary collective practice… of starting a group of
people who would work with graphics, interior design objects,
furniture, architecture and urban design. We had a studio downtown.
We sat around and talked. We’d do a little graphic thing here and
there to make some money. We couldn’t get architecture. It was all
very counter culture.”
It was at
that time that his son was going to a school in Pasadena that Mayne
describes as “completely radical, but fabulous.” Parent meetings
evolved into a first project for Morphosis, designing a new school,
the Sequoyah Educational Research Center, which subsequently won the
firm its first Progressive Architecture award in 1974. “That was the
beginning,” Mayne explains, “the PA award led to inquiries from
other publications around the world, wanting to publish this and
that, suddenly we had an existence.”
Mayne continued, “After doing a lot of remodels in Venice, the
Lawrence Residence project came along and that’s when everything
started breaking loose for us, getting published in LA, and we
became part of a group. We, as younger architects, were definitely
taking over, it was a real shift in the context of architecture.”
It was at this time, when he was emerging as a public
figure that somehow or other, various journalists began to
characterize Mayne as “an angry young man.” He takes exception: “No
doubt about it, I’m a complicated guy, but the bad boy description
comes from, I think, a reaction to my being relentlessly tenacious
and to having an independent voice. I have a long attention span,
and when I grab on to something, I stick with it…I was nicknamed
“pointer dog” by my former partner. If anything, I think this award,
the Pritzker Prize, acknowledges the necessity to act on ones
beliefs, to have the conviction of ones beliefs, and to sometimes
pay whatever it costs to see the work through with integrity.”
Today, Morphosis is home to forty architects and
designers, and Thom Mayne is firmly committed to the practice of
architecture as a collective enterprise. Mayne elaborates, “An
architect operates, finally, more as a director does than as a
painter or a sculptor. They have to focus the energy of a large
group of people on a common obsession. The architect has to know a
little bit about everything…it’s a generalist discipline not a
discipline for the specialist.” Not surprisingly, the products of
his practice range from designs for watches and teapots to homes to
large-scale civic buildings and other urban design and planning
schemes that aim to reshape entire cities.
Some of those recent commissions include a federal
office building in San Francisco, a satellite operation control
facility for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
near Washington, D.C., and a courthouse in Eugene, Oregon. Mayne
says that it was real kick to have won the last two major
competitions in New York City — one being a building to house the
Albert Nerken School of Engineering of the Cooper Union for the
Advancement of Science and Art, and the other, an Olympic Village
for the 2012 games, to be built whether or not the Olympics come to
New York in that year.
The multi-purpose Student Recreation Center at the
University of Cincinnati, a project being completed later this year,
includes athletic facilities, food facilities, student housing and
classroom space. The building is one of the key components of the
University’s new campus master plan and helps to tie together, like
a Chinese puzzle, many of the disparate conditions that exist in the
center of the campus. Just as this Pritzker Prize announcement was
being prepared, Mayne was notified that his firm’s recent design for
a new Alaska State Capitol had been awarded first prize in an
international design competition.
Scheduled for completion in 2007 is the Palenque at JVC,
a 6250 seat open-air multi-use arena for Guadalajara, Mexico, that
is situated to function as a gateway to a larger campus consisting
of ten distinguished building projects inaugurated to revitalize the
city. In Madrid, Morphosis is creating a public housing block
consisting of 165 two-, three-, and four- bedroom units totaling
10,000 square meters of built area.
One of his more important projects is the recently
completed Caltrans District 7 Headquarters in Los Angeles. The
design of this building goes beyond merely providing functional
spaces. It seeks in every way to actively engage the city and people
while blurring the distinction between outside and inside, with the
objective of creating a government bureau that works as a truly
public building. The internationally acclaimed artist, Keith Sonnier,
collaborated closely with Morphosis to create a fully integrated art
piece that activates the outdoor lobby with half a mile of neon and
argon tubes arranged in horizontal bands of red and blue light that
mimic the ribbons of headlights and taillights on the freeways of
California. Notably, Sonnier’s piece gives Los Angeles its largest
public art installayion.
As an educator himself, Mayne has always been concerned
with the culture of learning and the pedagogical impact of
architecture. All of his educational projects have explored and
continue to explore this territory and as a result have yielded
several exceptionally innovative projects. The Science Center
School, completed in 2004, was a unique joint venture between the
California Science Center and the Los Angeles Unified School
District. Sited on historic Exposition Park, the project is
surrounded by the Rose Garden, the Gehry designed Aerospace Museum,
and Exposition Boulevard, which separates the project from the
University of Southern California. Sculpted berms of earth buffer
the project from heavy traffic of the street. The work encompassed
upgrading and renovating a historic armory along with some new
construction.
The International Elementary School, completed in 1999
in Long Beach, California, provided the school district with an
innovative space saving plan that allowed them to accommodate their
program on a tight urban site. Classrooms are organized around a
central courtyard and program areas are stacked to increase the
overall compactness of the project. Stairs lead up to rooftop
playground, which provides students with a protected recreational
environment and views to their surrounding community.
Mayne’s most celebrated school project to date is the
Diamond Ranch High School for the Pomona Unified School District.
Completed in 1999, the high school’s goals of educational
flexibility and social interaction between students, teachers and
administration are expressed in a thoughtful and heterogeneous
design. Accommodating 1200 students, the design blurs the
distinction between building and landscape. Two rows of fragmented
forms of the structure are set tightly on either side of a “canyon”
or sidewalk that cuts through the face of the hillside, making clear
the vision of the campus as a reinterpreted landscape.
In Klagenfurt, Austria, a project with 250,000 square
feet of commercial office space, retail space, parking and a
kindergarten was completed in 2002 for the Hypo Alpe-Adria Bank
Carinthia. Morphosis describes this project as follows: “The
structure integrates itself into its surroundings and emerges from
the ground as ‘reconfigured earth.’ Like the seismic shifting of
tectonic plates, the bank headquarters itself erupts out of this
pregnant, expectant form clad in sheet metal, declaring its status
as a major cultural and civic institution and connecting the public
forum with the street.”
Citizens of Los Angeles would recognize several of
Mayne’s projects on the west side: Two office structures for Salick
Healthcare within a block of each other on Beverly Boulevard. Kate
Mantilini is a popular restaurant at the corner of Doheny Drive and
Wilshire Boulevard. Until recently, the store front of Hennessy &
Ingalls bookstore in the Third Street Mall of Santa Monica was a
Morphosis creation from its very earliest days. The bookstore
recently moved to another location close by. Also, until just a few
months ago, the sprawling Cedars Sinai Hospital, had a Comprehensive
Cancer Center designed by Mayne. A multi-story addition to the main
hospital building has superseded that structure. In West Hollywood,
another restaurant, Angeli, has the Morphosis touch.
That touch has reached all the way to the Far East. In
Seoul, Korea, a retail office building called Sun Tower was built
with two owners acting in concert. The project, which includes five
floors of retail (including two in the basement) and penthouse
offices for an international clothing manufacturing corporation,
provides an early example of Mayne’s long-standing interest in
creating innovative and high performing building skins in which the
arts of architecture and engineering are fully integrated.
Conceptually, this project allowed Mayne to explore formal ideas
that he has since further developed as they have found their way
into subsequent projects including his design for a major
installation at the Netherlands Architecture Institute, a move-able
stage set for the Charleroi Dance Group, and the Federal Office
Building in San Francisco. Also located in Asia and designed by the
firm is the ASE Design and Visitors Center in Taipei, Taiwan,
completed in 1997.
Among his earliest works are several innovative
residential projects: 2-4-6-8, Venice III, Sedlack, and Delmer, all
in Venice, California; as well as the Lawrence residence in Hermosa
Beach, California. Mayne acknowledges influence for some of these
projects from Robert Venturi, the late Aldo Rossi, and the late
James Stirling — all past Pritzker Laureates. By the mid-90’s Mayne
had completed two additional influential residential projects: the
Crawford residence and the Blades residence, both located in the
Santa Barbara, California area.
Over the years, Mayne has written some of the most
erudite essays and articles describing not only his work, but the
theories behind his designs. In addition to his experiences with
SCI-Arc, he now is a tenured professor at UCLA, teaching a graduate
program in architecture. In closing this interview, Mayne says,
“Architecture is a long distance sport. You put your mind to it, and
stay with it for 30 years, and then you’re just getting started.” |
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2005
Pritzker Prize Ceremony Will Be Held in the
Jay Pritzker Pavilion of Chicago’s
Millennium Park |
In celebration of the opening of
Millennium Park’s Jay Pritzker Pavilion this past year, the 2005
Pritzker Architecture Prize will be presented there in a ceremony on
Tuesday, May 31 at 6:30 p.m. With some 2000 seats available, this
will mark the first time a ceremony venue has made it possible for
the public to join with invited guests from around the world. This
will be the fourth time the prize has been awarded in Chicago —
twice before in the Art Institute and once on the occasion of the
opening of the Harold Washington Library Center.
The international prize, which is awarded each year to
a living architect for lifetime achievement, was established by the
Pritzker family of Chicago through their Hyatt Foundation in 1979.
Often referred to as “architecture’s Nobel” and “the profession’s
highest honor,” the presentation ceremonies move around the world
each year, paying homage to the architecture of other eras and/or
works by previous laureates of the prize.
“The pavilion is particularly appropriate because the
architect, Frank Gehry, was awarded the prize in 1989,” explained
Thomas J. Pritzker, president of The Hyatt Foundation. “And since
the City of Chicago is our home town, we wanted to share it with the
public. This will be the second time that a Frank Gehry building
will have been used — the first being the Guggenheim Museum in
Bilbao, Spain in 1997.”
The ceremony itself is relatively short, consisting of
welcoming remarks from Mayor Daley; comments from the jury chairman,
Lord Palumbo of the UK; the presentation of the prize by Thomas
Pritzker; and an acceptance speech from this year’s Laureate, Thom
Mayne.
Over the years, the ceremony locations have become, in
effect, an international grand tour of architecture. Last year in
St. Petersburg, Russia, the State Hermitage Museum, a great museum
and architectural monument comprising several epochs and styles was
the site for the presentation to the first woman architect to
receive the honor, Zaha Hadid of the United Kingdom.
As the ceremony locations are usually chosen each year
before the laureate is selected, there is no intended connection
between the two. This year’s Laureate will be announced in late
March.
Buildings by Laureates of the Pritzker Prize, such as
the National Gallery of Art’s East Building designed by I.M. Pei, or
Richard Meier’s Getty Center in Los Angeles have been sites for the
award.
Ceremonies were held twice in Italy, the first being in
1990 at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice when the late Aldo Rossi
received the prize. The second time was in 2002 when Glenn Murcutt
received the award in Michelangelo’s Campidoglio Square in Rome.
In some instances, places of historic interest such as
France’s Palace of Versailles and Grand Trianon, Todai-ji Buddhist
Temple in Japan, and Prague Castle in The Czech Republic have been
chosen as ceremony venues.
Some of the most beautiful museums have hosted the
event, including the already mentioned Palazzo Grassi: Chicago’s Art
Institute (using the Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room designed by
Louis Sullivan and his partner, Dankmar Adler, which was preserved
when the Stock Exchange building was torn down in 1972. The Trading
Room was then reconstructed in the museum’s new wing in 1977).
New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art provided the
setting in 1982 using Laureate Kevin Roche’s pavilion for the Temple
of Dendur. In homage to the late Louis Kahn, the ceremony was held
in Fort Worth’s Kimbell Art Museum in 1987. California’s Huntington
Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens was the setting in
l985.
The 20th anniversary of the prize was hosted at the
White House since in a way, the Pritzker Prize roots are in
Washington where the first two ceremonies were held. The first being
at Dumbarton Oaks, where a major addition to the original estate,
had been designed by yet another Pritzker Laureate — in fact, the
first laureate, Philip Johnson. Two other Washington venues, The
National Building Museum and the already mentioned National Gallery
of Art have both hosted the prize ceremony.
In 2003, the King and Queen of Spain presided over the
ceremony in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in
Madrid, when the Danish architect Jørn Utzon was honored.
In 2000 in Jerusalem, the Herodian Street excavation in
the shadow of the Temple Mount provided the most ancient of the
venues. Just two years ago, the ceremony was held at Monticello, the
home designed by Thomas Jefferson, who was not only an architect,
but the third president of the United States, who also authored the
Declaration of Independence.
One of the founding jurors of the Pritzker Prize, the
late Lord Clark of Saltwood, also known as art historian Kenneth
Clark, and perhaps best known for his television series and book,
Civilisation, said at one of the ceremonies, “A great historical
episode can exist in our imagination almost entirely in the form of
architecture. Very few of us have read the texts of early Egyptian
literature. Yet we feel we know those infinitely remote people
almost as well as our immediate ancestors, chiefly because of their
sculpture and architecture.” |
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A
Brief History of the Pritzker Architecture Prize |
The Pritzker Architecture Prize was
established by The Hyatt Foundation in 1979 to honor annually a
living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of
those qualities of talent, vision, and commitment, which has
produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and
the built environment through the art of architecture. It has often
been described as “architecture’s most prestigious award” or as “the
Nobel of architecture.”
The prize takes its name from the Pritzker family,
whose international business interests are headquartered in Chicago.
They have long been known for their support of educational, social
welfare, scientific, medical and cultural activities. Jay A.
Pritzker, who founded the prize with his wife, Cindy, died on
January 23, 1999. His eldest son, Thomas J. Pritzker has become
president of The Hyatt Foundation. In 2004, Chicago celebrated the
opening of Millennium Park, in which a music pavilion designed by
Pritzker Laureate Frank Gehry was dedicated and named for the
founder of the prize. It is in the Jay Pritzker Pavilion that the
2005 awarding ceremony takes place.
Tom Pritzker explains, “As native Chicagoans, it's not
surprising that our family was keenly aware of architecture, living
in the birthplace of the skyscraper, a city filled with buildings
designed by architectural legends such as Louis Sullivan, Frank
Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, and many others. ” He continues,
“In 1967, we acquired an unfinished building which was to become the
Hyatt Regency Atlanta. Its soaring atrium was wildly successful and
became the signature piece of our hotels around the world. It was
immediately apparent that this design had a pronounced affect on the
mood of our guests and attitude of our employees. While the
architecture of Chicago made us cognizant of the art of
architecture, our work with designing and building hotels made us
aware of the impact architecture could have on human behavior. So in
1978, when we were approached with the idea of honoring living
architects, we were responsive. Mom and Dad (Cindy and the late Jay
A. Pritzker) believed that a meaningful prize would encourage and
stimulate not only a greater public awareness of buildings, but also
would inspire greater creativity within the architectural
profession.” He went on to add that he is extremely proud to carry
on that effort on behalf of his family.
Many of the procedures and rewards of the Pritzker
Prize are modeled after the Nobel Prize. Laureates of the Pritzker
Architecture Prize receive a $100,000 grant, a formal citation
certificate, and since 1987, a bronze medallion. Prior to that year,
a limited edition Henry Moore sculpture was presented to each
Laureate.
Nominations are accepted from all nations; from
government officials, writers, critics, academicians, fellow
architects, architectural societies, or industrialists, virtually
anyone who might have an interest in advancing great architecture.
The prize is awarded irrespective of nationality, race, creed, or
ideology.
The nominating procedure is continuous from year to
year, closing in January each year. Nominations received after the
closing are automatically considered in the following calendar year.
There are well over 500 nominees from more than 47 countries to
date. The final selection is made by an international jury with all
deliberation and voting in secret. |
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The Evolution of the
Jury |
The first jury assembled in 1979
consisted of the late J. Carter Brown, then director of the National
Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; the late J. Irwin Miller, then
chairman of the executive and finance committee of Cummins Engine
Company; Cesar Pelli, architect and at the time, dean of the Yale
University School of Architecture; Arata Isozaki, architect from
Japan; and the late Kenneth Clark (Lord Clark of Saltwood), noted
English author and art historian.
The jury that selected the 2005 laureate comprises the
chairman, Lord Palumbo of the UK, well known architectural patron
and former chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain, former
chairman of the Tate Gallery Foundation, former trustee of the Mies
van der Rohe Archives of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and
chairman of the trustees, Serpentine Gallery; Balkrishna Vithaldas
Doshi, architect, planner and professor of architecture from
Ahmeddabad, Indai; Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman of Vitra, Basel,
Switzerland; Frank Gehry, architect and 1989 Prtizker
Laureate; Ada Louise Huxtable, author and architecture critic of the
Wall Street Journal; Carlos Jimenez, a principal of Carlos Jimenez
Studio and professor at the Rice University School of Architecture
in Houston, Texas; Victoria Newhouse, architectural historian and
author, founder and director of the Architectural History
Foundation; and Karen Stein, editiorial director of Phaidon Press,
New York.
Others who have served include the late Thomas J.
Watson, Jr., former chairman of IBM; the late Giovanni Agnelli,
former chairman of Fiat; Toshio Nakamura, former editor of A+U in
Japan; and American architects Philip Johnson and Kevin Roche; as
well as architects Ricardo Legorreta of Mexico, Fumihiko Maki of
Japan, and Charles Correa of India, the Lord Rothschild of UK; and
Jorge Silvetti, architect of professor of architecture at Harvard
University.
Bill Lacy, architect and advisor to the J. Paul Getty
Trust and many other foundations, as well as a professor at State
University of New York at Purchase, has served as executive director
of the prize from 1988 through 2005. Previous secretaries to the
jury were the late Brendan Gill, who was architecture critic of The
New Yorker magazine; and the late Carleton Smith. From the prize's
founding until his death in 1986, Arthur Drexler, who was the
director of the department of architecture and design at The Museum
of Modern Art in New York City, was a consultant to the jury. |
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Television Symposium
Marked
Tenth Anniversary of the Prize |
“Architecture has long been considered
the mother of all the arts,” is how the distinguished journalist
Edwin Newman, serving as moderator, opened the television symposium
Architecture and the City: Friends or Foes? “Building and decorating
shelter was one of the first expressions of man’s creativity, but we
take for granted most of the places in which we work or live,” he
continued. “Architecture has become both the least and the most
conspicuous of art forms.”
With a panel that included three architects, a critic,
a city planner, a developer, a mayor, a lawyer, a museum director,
an industrialist, an educator, and an administrator, the symposium
explored problems facing everyone — not just those who live in big
cities, but anyone involved in community life. Some of the questions
discussed: what should be built, how much, where, when, what will it
look like, what controls should be allowed, and who should impose
them?
For complete details on the symposium which was
produced in the tenth anniversary year of the prize, please go the "pritzkerprize.com"
web site, where you can also view the video tape of the symposium. |
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Exhibitions and
Book on the Pritzker Prize |
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The Art of Architecture, a circulating
exhibition of the work of Laureates of the Pritzker Architecture
Prize, which had its world premiere at the Harold Washington Library
Center in Chicago in 1992, will make its first appearance in the Far
East this fall at the Fine Arts Museum of Taipei, Taiwan. The
European debut was in Berlin at the Deutsches Architektur Zentrum in
in 1995. It was also shown at the Karntens Haus der Architektur in
Klagenfurt, Austria in 1996, and in 1997, in South America, at the
Architecture Biennale in Saõ Paulo, Brazil. In the U.S. it has been
shown at the Gallery of Fine Art, Edison Community College in Ft.
Myers, Florida; the Fine Arts Gallery at Texas A&M University; the
National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.; The J. B. Speed Museum
in Louisville, Kentucky; the Canton Art Institute, Ohio; the
Indianapolis Museum of Art Columbus Gallery, Indiana; the Washington
State University Museum of Art in Pullman, Washington; the
University of Nebraska, and Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.
Its most recent showings were in Costa Mesa, California; and museums
in Poland and Turkey. A smaller version of the exhibit was shown at
the White House ceremony in 1998, and has been shown at the State
Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia and at Cranbrook Academy
in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
Another exhibition, designed by Carlos Jimenez, titled,
The Pritzker Architecture Prize 1979-1999, which was organized by
The Art Institute of Chicago and celebrated the first twenty years
of the prize and the works of the laureates, was shown in Chicago in
1999 and in Toronto at the Royal Ontario Museum in 2000. It
provided, through drawings, original sketches, photographs, plans
and models, an opportunity to view works from some of the most
important architects who shaped the architecture of 20th century.
A book with texts by the late J. Carter Brown, Bill
Lacy, British journalist Colin Amery, and William J. R. Curtis, was
produced to accompany the exhibition, and is still available.
Co-published by Abrams of New York and The Art Institute of Chicago,
the 206 page book was edited by cocurator Martha Thorne. It presents
an analytical history of the prize along with examples of buildings
by the laureates illustrated in full color. The book celebrates the
first twenty years of the prize and the works of the laureates,
providing an opportunity to analyze the significance of the prize
and its evolution. |
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The bronze medallion
awarded to each Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize is based
on designs of Louis Sullivan, famed Chicago architect generally
acknowledged as the father of the skyscraper. On one side is the
name of the prize. On the reverse, three words are inscribed,
“firmness, commodity and delight,” These are the three conditions
refer red to by Henry Wotton in his 1624 treatise, The Elements of
Architecture, which was a translation of thoughts originally set
down nearly 2000 years ago by Marcus Vitruvius in his Ten Books on
Architecture, dedicated to the Roman Emperor Augustus. Wotton, who
did the translation when he was England’s first ambassador to
Venice, used the complete quote as: “T he end is to build well.
Well-building hath three conditions: commodity, firmness and
delight.” |
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