Architecture

Master of understatement David Chipperfield wins 2023 Pritzker Prize

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Sir David Alan Chipperfield has been named the 2023 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate. His Turner Contemporary, pictured, is an example of his subtle modernist approach to architecture. The eye-catching building is constructed to withstand challenging coastal conditions, including the occasional wave overtopping the building
Simon Menges
Amorepacific Headquarters was completed in 2017 and is located in Seoul, Republic of Korea
Noshe
Amorepacific Headquarters serves as headquarters to a large beauty company and also includes public spaces, a library, museum, and more
Noshe
Amorepacific Headquarters features a large greenery filled courtyard area at its center
Noshe
The River and Rowing Museum is an early highlight of Chipperfield's work and marked his first building completed in his native England
Richard Bryant/Arcaid
The River and Rowing Museum's pitched roofs are inspired by river boathouses and the traditional wooden barns of Oxfordshire, and are clad with green English oak
Richard Bryant/Arcaid
The Hepworth Wakefield is located at a historic waterfront conservation district at a bend of the River Calder in England
Iwan Baan
The Hepworth Wakefield takes the form of 10 interlinked trapezoidal shapes
Iwan Baan
The Hepworth Wakefield's interior design offers indirect light that fills the area with daylight without damaging the artworks
Iwan Baan
The Saint Louis Art Museum was created in collaboration with HOK and extended an existing museum building on the site
Simon Menges
The Saint Louis Art Museum is nestled among a grove of trees and doesn't overwhelm the site. Its interior design provides excellent views and ensures superb daylight inside
Simon Menges
The Inagawa Cemetery Chapel and Visitor Center in Japan features a shrine as a focal point, situated atop a grand staircase
Keiko Sasaoka
The Inagawa Cemetery Chapel and Visitor Center in Japan was created in collaboration with Key Operation Inc. and is defined by its distinctive red buildings
Keiko Sasaoka
Sir David Alan Chipperfield has been named the 2023 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate. His Turner Contemporary, pictured, is an example of his subtle modernist approach to architecture. The eye-catching building is constructed to withstand challenging coastal conditions, including the occasional wave overtopping the building
Simon Menges
The Turner Contemporary is an art gallery located on the north coast of Kent, England and takes the form of six crystalline structures
Simon Menges
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David Chipperfield has been declared the 2023 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the most distinguished award in architecture. The judges lauded his "subtle yet powerful" body of work, which spans four decades and over one hundred projects throughout Asia, Europe and North America.

Sir David Alan Chipperfield was born in London but raised on a countryside farm in Devon, southwest England, which gave him his first strong impression of architecture, a collection of barns and outbuildings.

He attended and then graduated the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London in 1980. Following this, he had stints working under Douglas Stephen and Pritzker Prize Laureates Norman Foster and the late Richard Rogers, before founding David Chipperfield Architects in 1985.

"I think good architecture provides a setting, it's there and it's not there," said Chipperfield in a statement. "Like all things that have great meaning, they're both foreground and background, and I'm not so fascinated by foreground all the time. Architecture is something which can intensify and support and help our rituals and our lives. The experiences in life that I gravitate toward and enjoy most are when normal things have been made special as opposed to where everything is about the special.

"Designing isn't coming up with colors and shapes. It's about developing a series of questions and ideas which have a certain rigor and consequence to them. And if you can do that, it doesn't matter which path you go down, as long as you go down the path well and have been consequential in the process."

The River and Rowing Museum is an early highlight of Chipperfield's work and marked his first building completed in his native England
Richard Bryant/Arcaid

Located on the south bank of the Thames, the River and Rowing Museum is an early highlight of Chipperfield's work and marked his first building completed in his native England, in 1997. The building embraces the spirit of a traditional English neighborhood, while adding a modern spin.

Its pitched roofs are inspired by river boathouses and the traditional wooden barns of Oxfordshire, and are clad with green English oak, which naturally weathers over time. Two structures of transparent glass bases, elevated on concrete pillars to withstand occasional flooding on the site, offer modernity and ensure openness and daylight inside.

The Hepworth Wakefield takes the form of 10 interlinked trapezoidal shapes
Iwan Baan

Hepworth Wakefield, completed in 2011, is another standout. Located at a historic waterfront conservation district, on a bend of the River Calder in Yorkshire, the art museum is made up of 10 interlinked trapezoidal forms.

The building is accessible only by footbridge and appears to rise out of the river, which also serves as a source of a passive air system that aids heating and cooling. Its interior is a masterclass of natural light, with carefully considered intentional and diffused sunlight ensuring illumination while protecting the sensitive works inside.

Amorepacific Headquarters features a large greenery filled courtyard area at its center
Noshe

Completed in 2017, the Amorepacific Headquarters is a more recent example of Chipperfield's approach to architecture. Created for a Korean beauty company, the Seoul building takes the form of a huge cube which combines office space, a public atrium, museum, library, and restaurants.

Its eye-catching exterior features vertical aluminum fins over its glass facade to provide solar shading, while three large openings connect to a large central courtyard space which has significant greenery and helps maximize ventilation and daylight throughout the building.

"This 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," said the Pritzker Prize jury citation. "Such a capacity to distill 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."

More examples of Chipperfield's body of work can be seen in our gallery.

Source: Pritzker Prize

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