The Pritzker Architecture Prize appoints Anne Lacaton, 2021 Pritzker Prize Laureate, and Hashim Sarkis, architect, educator and scholar, as newest members of the Pritzker Prize Jury. The Pritzker Prize is known internationally as architecture’s highest honor and this season will mark the 47th year of the accolade.
“The Pritzker Prize Jury is essential in heightening society’s awareness of the impact of architecture on the human experience. The built environment can play a positive role contending with the challenges of social inequity, climate change and scarcity of resources,” shares Tom Pritzker, Chairman of The Hyatt Foundation, which sponsors the award.
Alejandro Aravena, Jury Chair and 2016 Laureate, continues, “the work of the Jury harmonizes the relationship between the contribution to humanity and the art of architecture, mirroring the challenges, needs and expectations of society.”
Lacaton honors the pre-existing, advocating for social justice and sustainability through both new construction and the transformation of social housing, cultural and academic institutions, public spaces and urban strategies. Responding to climatic, economic and social urgencies, she prioritizes the welfare of a building’s inhabitants through freedom of use and generosity of space
“We must embrace architects who fulfill ambitious goals—socially, environmentally and architecturally— while understanding and integrating today’s economics, expectations and desires. I have agreed to join the Pritzker Jury to sustain approaches and practices that place the inhabitant, community and environment at the center of their intentions and care,” explains Lacaton. “We need architecture that softens, repairs and creates relationships to provide a sense of freedom, invitation and encouragement to everyone.”
Anne Lacaton is Professor Emeritus of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich (Zurich, Switzerland), and a visiting professor at Polytechnic University of Madrid, Master in Housing (Madrid, Spain, since 2007). She was the Rothwell Co-Chair, alongside fellow 2021 Laureate, Jean-Philippe Vassal, at the University of Sydney (Australia, 2021–2023), has been a visiting professor at Delft University of Technology (Netherlands, 2016–2017) and École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland, 2006–2007, 2010–2011), and was the Design Critic in Architecture (2015) and the Kenzo Tange Visiting Chair in Architecture and Urban Planning (2011) at Harvard Graduate School of Design (United States of America). She cofounded Lacaton & Vassal in Paris in 1987, graduated from École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture et de Paysage de Bordeaux (France, 1980) and received a Masters in Urban Planning from Bordeaux Montaigne University (France, 1984).
Hashim Sarkis, Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, designs affordable housing, private residences, institutional buildings, public spaces and urban plans as inhabitations that reimagine the democratic society of each space operating within transitive unprescribed boundaries.
“At our doorsteps are new problems, be they related to climate, equity or new ways of life,” comments Sarkis. “But architects are rising to the occasion, expanding the field with inspiring new work. The immense talent in the discipline makes the task of the Pritzker Prize Jury all the more exciting and challenging as we look to identify work that is at once timely and timeless in confronting these issues.”
Sarkis is the former curator of the Venice Biennale of Architecture (Italy, 2021) and the Aga Khan Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism in Muslim Societies at Harvard Graduate School of Design (2004–2014). He authored The World as an Architectural Project (with Roi Salgueiro and Gabriel Kozlowski) and Circa 1958, Lebanon in the Projects and Plans of Constantinos Doxiadis. He established Hashim Sarkis Studios, now based in Boston, Massachusetts and Beirut, Lebanon, in 1998, and received a Bachelor of Architecture and Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design (United States of America, 1987), a Master of Architecture with distinction from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (1989) and PhD in Architecture from Harvard University (1995).
Lacaton and Sarkis will join a distinguished class of fellow jurors: Barry Bergdoll, a Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University (New York, New York USA), curator and author; Deborah Berke, Dean of Yale School of Architecture (New Haven, Connecticut, USA), and architect; Stephen Breyer, academic and retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice; André Corrêa do Lago, architectural critic, curator and Secretary for Climate, Energy and Environment, Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the Government of Brazil; and Kazuyo Sejima, architect, educator and 2010 Pritzker Laureate. Manuela Luca-Dázio, remains Executive Director of the Pritzker Prize.
Wang Shu, 2012 Laureate, architect and educator based in Hangzhou, China, departs the Jury after seven years of service. The Pritzker Prize was most recently awarded to Riken Yamamoto of Yokohama, Japan, this past May in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America. The 2024 Ceremony Video will be released this November.
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Press release courtesy of The Hyatt Foundation / The Pritzker Architecture Prize
Photo of Anne Lacaton courtesy of Triennale Milano. Photo of Harshim Sarkis ©Bryce Vickmark
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