The bronze medallion awarded to each Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize is
based on the designs of Louis H. Sullivan, famed Chicago architect generally acknowledged
as the father of the skyscraper.
On one side is the name of the prize where the Laureate's name is
also inscribed.
On the reverse, the three words inscribed, "firmness,
commodity and delight."
These are the three conditions referred 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 of 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: "The end is to
build well. Well-building hath three conditions: commodity, firmness and delight."
