Pritzker Prize 2016: Social Commitment Rewarded

Above photo of Alejandro Aravena by Cristobal Palma

 

1.2016.0125.PP_Medal_frontThe 2016 Pritzker Architectural Prize, widely recognized as the world’s highest design honor, is going to Alejandro Arevena of Santiago, Chile. “Who?” you may ask.

Again this year, as it has done before in recent years, the Pritzker jury has passed over numerous starchitects, those who’ve produced design landmarks for prestigious clients, to single out an architect more notable for social and environmental concerns than for seductive form-making.

(ED. Note: For photos of Alejandro Arena’s work please see the photo gallery at the end of this article)

The Pritzker jury’s report spells out the criteria behind their choice of Mr. Arevena.

The 48-year-old Chilean, they write, “epitomizes the revival of a more socially engaged architect…his built work gives economic opportunity to the less privileged, mitigates the effects of natural disasters, reduces energy consumption, and provides welcoming public space. Innovative and inspiring, he shows how architecture at its best can improve people’s lives.”

His structures tend, nevertheless, to have bold aesthetic appeal. But, as the Pritzker citation points out, even the most sculpturally dramatic ones incorporate environmentally efficient exterior walls, which enclose interiors featuring “convivial meeting places.” And Mr. Arevena has hardly been just tilling his own corner of the world. He has taught at Harvard, designed significant works in Mexico and Texas and is now completing a corporate office building in China.

His personal image communicates his youth, relative to most recipients of such honors. In photos, he appears informally dressed, with his abundant dark hair in a spiky cut. In a brief video on the Pritzker site, he speaks (in English) of buildings as the “nouns” where “verbs” take place.

Among his notable works are:

>Several buildings at the Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago: the school’s Mathematics School (1999), Medical School (2004), Siamese Towers classroom and office structure (2005) and Innovation Center (2014).

>Quinta Monroy housing, Iquique, Chile (2004): an innovative publicly funded project that provides “half a good house” for each of 100 families, with in-between spaces and infrastructure to expand them to middle-class standards as their means allow.

>St. Edward’s University dormitories in Austin, TX (2008), accommodating 300 students and campus amenities in a complex that presents rugged concrete walls to the outside world, and colorful and more transparent ones facing interior courtyards.

>Housing development, Monterrey, Mexico (2010): an “improved version” (in the architect’s words) of the Iquique housing in Chile, stacking duplex residences over ground-floor units, again with adjoining space prepared for future expansion.

>Office and research structure for the Novartis pharmaceutical company in Shanghai (now nearing completion), “designed,” said the Pritzker statement, “to accommodate different modes of work – individual, collective, formal and informal.”

>Metropolitan Promenade, Santiago (1997, on-going): a walking circuit around a steep, undeveloped ridge in Santiago, significantly expanding the city’s limited park offerings.

>Bicentennial Children’s Park, Santiago (2012): a four-acre active recreation area, with vegetable gardens among its amenities.

>“Chairless” for Vitra (2010): the absolutely minimal seating device, simply a strap around knees and back, for support when sitting on the floor.

Since 2001, Mr. Aravena has reinforced his social credentials as a founding partner of Elemental, a Santiago-based “do tank,” as opposed to a “think tank,” which has executed a number of public-spirited projects, including some 2,500 units of low-income housing. Among its notable accomplishments are plans for the “sustainable reconstruction” of the Chilean city of Constitucion after its 2010 earthquake and tsunami. Working with community participants, the group devised emergency housing and drew up evacuation plans for future emergencies. Among its proposals is the planting of forests along low-lying shorelines – judged to be more effective than constructed barriers in blunting the force of waves and reducing damage to populated areas.

Prize Precedents

The very first winner of the Pritzker, in 1979, was the American architect Philip Johnson, for whom “social” meant gatherings at New York’s Century Club or lunch at his permanently reserved table at the Four Seasons (magnificently designed, admittedly, by him). In succeeding years, most of the Pritzkers have also gone to architects best known for dramatic forms created for prestigious institutional clients – architects such as:

>Kevin Roche (1982), I.M.Pei (1983) and Frank Gehry (1989) of the United States

>James Stirling (1981)and Norman Foster (1999) of England

>Kenzo Tange (1987) and Tadao Ando (1995) of Japan

>Renzo Piano (1998) of Italy

Around the turn of the millennium, several Pritzker laureates were recognized for elegant work at distinctly smaller scales: Sverre Finn (1997) of Norway, Glenn Murcutt (2002) of Australia and Peter Zumthor (2009) of Switzerland. Bravura form-making made a comeback with selection of the first female Pritzker laureate, Zaha Hadid (2004) of England and of Thom Mayne (2005) from the U.S.

Environmental and social concerns have counted heavily in a couple of other recent Pritzker choices:

>Wang Shu of China (2012), known for his imaginative use of existing structures and humble materials

>Shigeru Ban of Japan (2014), recognized for his several ingenious disaster relief projects and his unprecedented use of cardboard as a structural material.

The 2015 award to Frei Otto, known mainly for virtuoso structural innovation, was essentially a catch-up award to an architect-engineer whose fame had peaked decades earlier.

In this year’s choice of Mr. Arevena, the jury bypassed a number of starchitects now in the queue as possible recipients of the honor. Among the several widely recognized architects who haven’t yet made the cut are:

>Bjark Ingels (head of the Bjark Ingels Group, or BIG), of Copenhagen and New York, whose many projects include a variety of innovative housing developments in Denmark; the high sculptural 860,000-square-foot, VIA apartment complex nearing completion in Manhattan; and the Google headquarters in California he is designing (with the English architect Thomas Heatherwick). With a change in planned occupancy, his design for Manhattan’s 2 World Trade Center is no longer certain to proceed.

>The partners of Snohetta, the Oslo and New York firm that has completed the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet on the Oslo waterfront and September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion at Ground Zero, plus a new central library and plaza in Calgary, a performing arts center at Queen’s University in Ontario, and many other high profile cultural projects. Their expansion of San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art is nearing completion.

>New York’s own Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, who recently completed the Broad Museum in Los Angeles, collaborated on New York’s High Line, and have under construction a business school for Columbia University, an art museum for U.C. Berkeley, and a Museum of Image and Sound in Rio de Janeiro. In the design stage are three Manhattan projects: expansion of the Museum of Modern Art, the Culture Shed and a residential tower for New York’s Hudson Yards development.

Maybe the Pritzker jury wants to see how these firm’s choice current commissions turn out.

The award ceremony (every year at a different location determined before the recipient is chosen) will take place on April 4 at the newly restored United Nations Headquarters in New York, the work of a team of late 1940s international stars, its overall design concept properly attributed to Pritzker winner Oscar Niemeyer of Brazil (1988).