Rem Koolhaas of The Netherlands
Is the Pritzker Architecture Prize
Laureate for the Year 2000

Los Angeles, CA—Rem Koolhaas, a 56 year old architect from the Netherlands, has been named the Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate for the year 2000.

In Europe, he has a number of completed projects that have
won high praise from critics, including a residence in Bordeaux,
France; the Educatorium, a multifunction building for Utrecht
University in the Netherlands; the master plan and Grand Palais for Lille, France which is his largest realized urban planning project; and the Kunsthal, providing exhibition space, a restaurant and auditoriums in Rotterdam.

In a development in Fukuoka, Japan, his Nexus Housing is a
project consisting of 24 individual houses, each three stories high. Koolhaas also has projects in Portugal, Korea and Germany, the latter being a new embassy for the Netherlands in Berlin, which is currently under construction. 

He has a number of major commissions in the United States that will come to fruition within the next two years: a student center for the predominantly Mies van der Rohe campus of the
Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and a new central
public library for Seattle, as well as buildings in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Koolhaas has also been working for Universal Studios, owned by the Seagram Company, on a master plan and headquarters buildings.

Koolhaas’ work and ideas often spark critical debate in areas
in which he has been working. While his radical design for the
Seattle Public Library has won praise there, initial reports
described Seattle as “bracing for a wild ride with a man famous for straying outside the bounds of convention.”

“It seems fitting that as we begin a new millennium, the jury
should choose an architect that seems so in tune with the future,” says Thomas J. Pritzker, president of The Hyatt Foundation, “In fact, Koolhaas has been called a prophet of a new modern architecture. It’s not surprising that the Museum of Modern Art has had not one, but two exhibitions devoted to his ideas.” 

The Bordeaux house, named as Best Design of 1998 by Time magazine, is one of his most important works, designed to fill the needs of a couple whose old house had become a prison to the husband who has been confined to a wheel chair following an automobile accident. Koolhaas proposed a home in three sections, actually what he prefers to describe as three houses, one on top of the other. The lowest part he calls “cave-like, a series of caverns carved out from the hill for the most intimate life of the family.” The “top house” is divided into spaces for the couple, and spaces for their children. Sandwiched in between is an almost invisible glass room, half inside, half outside, meeting the grade on one side, where the client has his own room for living. This room is actually a vertically moving platform, 3 X 3.5 meters (10 X 10.75 feet ), functioning as an elevator, which allows the man access to all levels. One wall of the elevator is a continuous surface of shelves providing access to books for his work. 

Koolhaas published his first book, Delirious New York, in 1978. Author James Steele described it as “an offbeat but well-expressed and incisive look at the pattern of urban growth.” A Los Angeles Times article described the book as “bulging with novel theories and images about that city—among them an image of the Chrysler Building in bed with the Empire State Building.”

More recently, he wrote S,M,L,XL, which Time magazine
called “the ultimate coffee-table book for a generation raised on both MTV and Derrida.” The Pritzker jury considers Koolhaas’ writings so important that the prize citation says he is as well known for his books, plans and academic explorations as he is for his buildings. 

Pritzker Prize jury chairman, J. Carter Brown, commented, “Rem Koolhaas is widely respected as one of the most gifted and original talents in world architecture today. The leader of a spectacularly irreverent generation of Dutch architects, his
restless mind, conceptual brilliance, and ability to make a
building sing have earned him a stellar place in the firmament
of contemporary design.”

Bill Lacy, the executive director of the Pritzker Prize, wrote
in his 1991 book, 100 Contemporary Architects, “As an architect/philosopher/artist, Dutchman Rem Koolhaas has expanded and continues to expand our perceptions of cities and civilization.” 

Lacy, who is president of the State University of New York at Purchase, added, “Koolhaas has amassed an intriguing array of brilliant projects that continually blur the line between urban design and architecture. He has a rare talent and ability to think in design terms that range from the smallest construction detail to the concept for a regional master plan.”

The formal presentation of what has come to be known
throughout the world as architecture's highest honor will be
made at a ceremony in Jerusalem, Israel on May 29, 2000. At that time, Koolhaas will be presented with a $100,000 grant and a bronze medallion. He is the first Pritzker Laureate from the
Netherlands, and the 23rd to be honored.

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 present jury comprises the already mentioned J. Carter
Brown, director emeritus of the National Gallery of Art, and
chairman of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, who continues to serve as chairman; Giovanni Agnelli, chairman of Fiat from
Torino, Italy; Ada Louise Huxtable, author and architectural
critic of New York; Jorge Silvetti, chairman, department of
architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design;
and Lord Rothschild, former chairman of the National Heritage
Memorial Fund of Great Britain and formerly the chairman of
that country's National Gallery.

The prize presentation ceremony moves to different locations
around the world each year, paying homage to historic and
contemporary architecture. As already mentioned, this year's
ceremony will be held in the Jerusalem Archaeological Park,
utilizing a site where some two millennia ago, there existed an
architectural wonder, the world's largest arch leading to the
Temple Mount.

Philip Johnson was the first Pritzker Laureate in 1979. Sir
Norman Foster, now Lord Foster, of the UK was the 1999 Laureate. Renzo Piano of Italy was the 21st Laureate on the 20th anniversaryin 1998. Two architects were named to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the prize in 1988: the late Gordon Bunshaft of the United States and Oscar Niemeyer of Brazil, hence the reason for 23 laureates in 22 years. There have been seven laureates chosen from the United States, and with Koolhaas, 16 laureates from 12 other countries around the world.

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 over 500 nominees from more than 40 countries being considered each year.

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Media Contact for Rem Koolhaas: Jan Knikker, Public Relations Office for Metropolitan Architecture Heer Bokelweg #149 3032 AD Rotterdam, The Netherlands          Telephone: 31-10-243-8200          Fax: 31-10-243-8202          email: pr@oma.nl

Rem Koolhaas is that rare combination of visionary and implementer —philosopher and pragmatist — theorist and prophet — an architect whose ideas aboutbuildings and urban planning made him one of the most discussed contemporary architects in the world even before any of his design projects came to fruition. It was all accomplished with his writings and discussions with students, many times stirring controversy for straying outside the bounds of convention. He is as well known for his books, regional and global plans, academic explorations with groups of students, as he is for his bold, strident, thought provoking architecture.

His emergence in the late seventies with his book Delirious New York was the start of a remarkable two decades that have seen his built works, projects, plans, exhibitions and studies resonate throughout the professional and academic landscape,
becoming a lightning rod for both criticism and praise.

One of his earliest plans for the expansion of the Dutch Parliament aroused such interest that other commissions followed. The Netherlands Dance Theatre in The Hague was one of the first completed projects to garner critical acclaim from many quarters. Since then, Koolhaas’ commissions have ranged in scale from a remarkably inventive and compassionate house in Bordeaux to the master plan and giant convention center for Lille, both in France. The Bordeaux house was designed to accommodate extraordinary conditions of use by a client confined to a wheel chair without sacrificing the quality of living. Had he only done the Bordeaux project, his niche in the history or architecture would have been secure. Add to that a lively center of educational life, an Educatorium (a made up word for a factory for learning) in Utrecht, as well as housing in Japan, cultural centers and other residences in France and the Netherlands, and proposals for such things as an Airport Island in the North Sea, and you have a talent of extraordinary dimensions revealed. 

He has demonstrated many times over his ability and creative talent to confront seemingly insoluble or constrictive problems with brilliant and original solutions. In every design there is a free-flowing, democratic organization of spaces and functions with an unselfconscious tributary of circulation that in the end dictates a new unprecedented architectural form. His body of work is as much about ideas as it is buildings.

His architecture is an architecture of essence; ideas given built form. He is an architect obviously comfortable with the future and in close communication with its fast pace and changing configurations. One senses in his projects the intensity of
thought that forms the armature resulting in a house, a convention center, a campus plan, or a book. He has firmly established himself in the pantheon of significant architects of the last century and the dawning of this one. For just over twenty years of accomplishing his objectives — defining new types of relationships, both theoretical and practical, between architecture and the cultural situation, and for his contributions to the built environment, as well as for his ideas, he is awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize.

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Additional Comments from 
Individual Pritzker Prize Jurors

“Rem Koolhaas is widely respected as one of the most gifted and original talents in world architecture today. The leader of a spectacularly irreverent generation of Dutch architects, his 
restless mind, conceptual brilliance, and ability to make a building sing have earned him a stellar place in the firmament of contemporary design.” 

J. Carter Brown
Chairman, Pritzker Jury

"Rem Koolhaas is a generation-spanning talent with a brilliantly creative, witty and iconoclastic take on the built environment. He is both innovator and commentator, and by example and teaching, the influence of his original and provocative work has already produced a radical new group of gifted younger practitioners." 

Ada Louise Huxtable
Pritzker Juror

"Beyond the merits of Koolhaas' individual projects, his complete work has achieved the successful repositioning of architecture as a practice that is firmly in tune with present culture.It is a happy paradox that the audacity of his position is achieved by getting rid of all the misleading moralisms, posturings and "contaminations" that plagued and debilitated architecture in the twentieth century. By eschewing altogether the tiring polemics of Modernism vs. Historicism, he presents an architecture of wonder without resorting to the bizarre. Note: he is not a formalist, yet he creates form; he is not a functionalist, yet programs are the generators of his solutions; he is not a theoretician, yet ideas dominate his work. What we have obtained from his work is an exhilarating, liberating, and yet more sober and accurate understanding of architecture's true social potential that breaks the stalemate between theory and practice." 

Jorge Silvetti
Pritzker Juror

"Koolhaas has amassed an intriguing array of brilliant projects that continually blur the line between urban design and architecture. He has a rare talent and ability to think in design terms that range from the smallest construction detail to the concept for a regional master plan." 

Bill Lacy
Executive Director

The presentation on May 29, 2000 of the Pritzker Architecture Prize to Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas encompassed three locations within the Jerusalem Archaeological Park dating back two millennia, and all adjacent to the Temple Mount. Speaking at the unveiling of a recent excavation in the Park in October of last year, Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel, said of the work at the Parkby the Israel Antiquities Authority, “We are duty bound to turn these places surrounding us — sacred to Islam, Christianity and Judaism — into a bridge and symbol of freedom of access and worship...”

Thomas J. Pritzker, President of The Hyatt Foundation, expressed gratitude to the state of Israel and the Israel Antiquities Authority, saying, “We are grateful to be able to hold our ceremony in this historic site. I would like to echo the sentiments expressed by the Prime Minister, and reinforce the thought that in this Millennial Year, it is appropriate that our international prize for architecture be presented in a location significant to so many religions, especially since religions have been responsible for so much architecture through the ages. And of course, we must not overlook the architectural significance of this site. It was probably one of the most elaborate and complex structures in the known world 2000 years ago. It stands as a physical connection between our times and a period of history that is fundamental to much of western civilization.” 

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 Pritzker Prize has been awarded to twenty-two architects from eleven countries, including seven from the U.S.A. The presentation ceremonies move around the world from year to year paying homage to the architecture of other eras and/or works by laureates of the prize.

The Jerusalem Archaeological Park extends over one of the few parts of Ancient Jerusalem which have not been built up in the past few centuries. In fact, evidence has been found there of earliest human occupation, and remains of the first settlement established some 5000 years ago. The areas being used for the Pritzker Prize ceremony albeit are of much later vintage, only 2000 years old, and of course, all of King Herod’s constructions of that period were destroyed, as was most of Jerusalem, by the Romans in 70 CE(AD). 

Guests first assembled for a reception on a landing at the top of a monumental staircase (now partially restored) at the southern wall of the Temple Mount enclosure, in an area that originally provided access to one of the entrances to the Temple Mount. There were actually two gates in the south wall during the Second Temple period, known as the “Huldah Gates,” probably so named for a prophetess who lived in Jerusalem during the First Temple Period. The two gates led into tunnels through which people could pass on their way to the Temple above. During the reception, a video presentation of a computer generated reconstruction of what the entire area looked like two millennia ago was presented, along with some brief remarks from the archaeologists who are doing
the research of the area.

From the reception area, it was a short walk to a more recent excavation site at the southwest corner of the Temple Mount, a place designated as the Herodian Street. This was the main thoroughfare of Second Temple Period Jerusalem. The street runs along the western wall of the Temple Mount and if it
were not interrupted by other structures, it would continue along the western wall (known as the wailing wall). According to researchers at the Israel Antiquities Authority, it was in use for merely a brief period before the final destruction in 70 CE (AD). Guests were seated on the ancient paving and beside the remains of small stone vaults which were shops in ancient times. Looking up at the Temple Mount enclosure wall, a few building stones still project from the face of the wall, all that remains of what was a tremendous arch or vault that was supported on one side by the wall, and on the other by a pier, and which in turn supported another monumental flight of stairs that led from the street to the Temple above. The arch is named for the American Bible scholar Edward Robinson, who first identified the arch in 1839.

When the Roman soldiers deliberately destroyed Jerusalem and theTemple, they dislodged large stones from the arch and hurled them down to thestreet below. Many of these hundreds of tons of stones remain on the street where they landed two millennia ago.

Following the ceremony, just a few paces away, dinner was served in the courtyard of the Umayyad Palace, believed to have been built of stones taken from the ruins of the Temple Mount walls in the late seventh and early eighth centuries CE (AD) by the Umayyad rulers during a period of Muslim rule in Jerusalem. It was also during this period that the existing Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock were built.

As has become tradition with Pritzker ceremonies, on the day before the presentation, guests were provided with architectural tours of Jerusalem. Included in the tour were the following landmarks: the already mentioned Dome
of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque which was not accessible during the ceremony; the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; the Garden of Gethsemane; the Western Wall (known as the wailing wall); the Holocaust Museum; the Rockefeller
Museum; the Israel Museum including the Billy Rose Sculpture Garden, designed by Isamu Noguchi, and the Shrine of the Book (designed by American architects Fredrick Kiesler and Armand Bartos) where some of the Dead Sea Scrolls are displayed; both the Jerusalem Center of Brigham Young University and the Hebrew University; and the Israel Supreme Court (designed by the brother and sister team of Ram Karmi and Ada Karmi-Melamede of Tel Aviv). The choices were made to provide a cross section of multi-religious and secular,
as well as both modern and historic sites.

J. Carter Brown, chairman of the Pritzker jury, stated, “In more than two decades of prize-giving, a tradition of moving the ceremony to world sites of architectural significance has evolved becoming, in effect, an international grand tour of architecture. Modern buildings by Laureates of the Pritzker Prize have been used, such as the National Gallery of Art’s East Building designed by I. M. Pei; Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; and Richard Meier’s new Getty Center in Los Angeles . In some instances, places of historic interest such as France’s Palace of Versailles and Grand Trianon, or Todai-ji Buddhist Temple in Japan, or Prague Castle in The Czech Republic have been chosen as ceremony venues. Some of the most beautiful museums have hosted the event, from Chicago’s Art Institute to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the setting was 1982 Laureate Kevin Roche’s pavilion for the Temple of Dendur. In homage to the late Louis Kahn, we were in Fort Worth’s Kimbell Art Museum in 1987. California’s Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens was the setting in l985. Two years ago, the 20th anniversary of the prize was held at the White House returning to the city in which the first two ceremonies were held at Dumbarton Oaks, designed by yet another Pritzker Laureate, the very first in fact, Philip Johnson. And of course, last year we were privileged to be in the Altes Museum by Karl Friedrick Schinkel; the classic modernist New National Gallery by Mies van der Rohe; and the recent work of another Pritzker Laureate, Rafael Moneo, The Grand Hyatt Hotel in Berlin.” 

Brown continued, “As the purpose of the Prize is to heighten awareness of the art of architecture, the variety of these sites has reinforced the attention the Prize has brought to the work of preeminent living practitioners, as well asarchitects from the past. In Jerusalem, we were going into the distant past, which is no less important to how we perceive architecture.” He further recalled that one of the Pritzker Prize founding jurors, the late Lord Clark of Saltwood, perhaps best known as art historian Kenneth Clark who gained worldwide fame for his television series and book, Civilisation, went even further back in time, saying, “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.”

*For clarity we are showing both time designations: 
BCE Before the Common Era equivalent to BC 
CE Common Era equivalent to AD. 

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