david chipperfield awarded 2023 pritzker prize

sir david chipperfield wins architecture’s highest award

Sir David Alan Chipperfield has been selected as laureate of the 2023 Pritzker Architecture Prize — the award commonly regarded as architecture’s highest honor. Established by the Hyatt Foundation in 1979, the annual award honors architects whose built work demonstrates a combination talent, vision, and commitment. Last year, Francis Kéré became the first black architect to win the prize, while 2021 saw Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal honored for their collaborative practice.

Sir David Chipperfield

header image: the Neues Museum, courtesy of SMB / Ute Zscharnt for David Chipperfield Architects

the london-born laureate

Born in London in 1953, Pritzker Prize-winner Sir David Alan Chipperfield was raised on a farm in Devon, in the south-west of England. He has noted that his earliest memories of architecture are from the collection of barns and outbuildings on the farm, which filled him with a sense of nostalgia. After graduating from the Kingston School of Art in 1976 and the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London in 1980, he worked under Douglas Stephen, Norman Foster, 1999 Pritzker Prize Laureate, and the late Richard Rogers, 2007 Pritzker Prize Laureate, before founding David Chipperfield Architects in London in 1985.

‘Designing isn’t coming up with colors and shapes,’ the laureate says. ‘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.’

image courtesy David Chipperfield

The English architect is known for his understated designs, often inspired by traditional building forms. With a career spanning more than forty years, his work can be discovered in cities across the world. His iconic works include the refurbishment of Mies van der Rohe’s iconic Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and the Amorepacific Headquarters in Seoul. Most recently, his proposal for the National Archaeological Museum of Athens has been selected to expand the largest museum in Greece.

Chipperfield has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Royal Institute of British Architects Royal Gold Medal, the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal — and now the Pritzker Architecture Prize.

Royal Academy of Arts Masterplan, image courtesy of The Royal Academy of Arts

what the jury says

The Pritzker Prize is conferred in acknowledgment of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which have persistently produced significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture. The career of David Chipperfield is marked by a long term, rigour and consistency in a body of work that has seamlessly integrated and balanced both terms of that equation.

The careful, well-crafted, precise and calm responses he has offered to the goals aspired to in his buildings can only originate in a deep and sustained knowledge of the discipline. Yet, those responses are never self-centred, nor do they serve in any way as art for art’s sake: rather, they always remained focused on the higher purpose of the undertaking and on the pursuit of civic and public good.

refurbishment of Mies van der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin | image by Simon Menges

David Chipperfield ‘does his job’, and he does it by balancing relevancy and stature. To operate anchored to the body of knowledge of the discipline or architecture requires both intelligence and modesty; to put such knowledge at the service of a given project requires talent and maturity. He has in every case skilfully chosen the tools that are instrumental to the project instead of those that might only celebrate the architect as artist.

Such an approach explains how it is that a gifted architect can sometimes almost disappear when working on the restoration or renovation of existing buildings and architectural masterpieces like those on Berlin’s Museum Island or even more in the case of Mies van der Rohe’s iconic Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. It also explains why the wide spectrum of David Chipperfield’s skills appears in full when he is called upon to create from scratch.

Saint Louis Art Museum, image by Simon Menges

Always characterized by elegance, restraint, a sense of permanence, as well as clear compositions and refined detailing, his buildings each time exude clarity, surprise, sophisticated contextuality and confident presence. In an era of excessive commercialization, over-designing, and over-exaggeration, he can always achieve balance: between a modern minimalistic architectural language and freedom of expression, between abstract statements and rigorous elegance never devoid of complexity. read the jury’s full statement here.

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