Who Has Won the Pritzker Prize?

Pritzker Prize 2017 Ceremony: Ryue Nishizawa, Tadao Ando, Kazuyo Sejima, Rafael Aranda, Glenn Murcutt, Carme Pigem, Ramon Vilalta, Toyo Ito, Shigeru Ban. Image © The Hyatt Foundation / Pritzker Architecture Prize

The Pritzker Prize is the most important award in the field of architecture, awarded to a living architect whose built work “has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity through the art of architecture.” The Prize rewards individuals, not entire offices, as took place in 2000 (when the jury selected Rem Koolhaas instead of his firm OMA) or in 2016 (with Alejandro Aravena selected instead of Elemental); however, the prize can also be awarded to multiple individuals working together, as took place in 2001 (Herzog & de Meuron), 2010 (Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA), and 2017 (Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem, and Ramon Vilalta of RCR Arquitectes).

The award is an initiative funded by Jay Pritzker through the Hyatt Foundation, an organization associated with the hotel company of the same name that Jay founded with his brother Donald in 1957. The award was first given in 1979, when the American architect Philip Johnson, was awarded for his iconic works such as the Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut.

The Pritzker Prize has been awarded for almost forty straight years without interruption, and there are now 18 countries with at least one winning architect. To date, half of the winners are European; while the Americas, Asia, and Oceania share the other twenty editions. So far, no African architect has been awarded, making it the only continent without a winner.

In terms of gender, only three women have won the award: Zaha Hadid (2004), Kazuyo Sejima (2010, together with Ryue Nishizawa) and Carme Pigem (2017, together with Ramón Vilalta and Rafael Aranda). While in 2012, Lu Wenyu, partner and wife of Wang Shu, rejected the proposal to share the award, saying that “I never wanted a Pritzker.”

However, this has not been the case for Denise Scott Brown, who did not receive the award in 1991 alongside her partner and husband Robert Venturi. In 2013, organizations and personalities demanded to give the prize retroactively to Scott Brown, a request that was rejected by Peter Palumbo—then president of the jury—who closed down the discussion by explaining that “a jury can not reopen or criticize the work of a previous jury.”