Sir David Chipperfield, founder of David Chipperfield Architects (Photo: Getty)
Cover Sir David Chipperfield (Photo: Getty Images)

This year's most prestigious prize in architecture is awarded to British architect Sir David Chipperfield

On March 7, 2023, the Pritzker Architecture Prize jury announced British architect Sir David Chipperfield as this year's recipient of one of the highest honours in architecture.

Known chiefly for civic projects like Des Moines Public Library in Iowa, the UK's Turner Contemporary gallery, and his reimagined Neues Museum in Berlin, his firm, David Chipperfield Architects, has won over 100 international awards and accolades.

These include the prestigious RIBA Stirling Prize, which was awarded for the Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach, Germany, as well as the Mies van der Rohe Award (EU Prize for Contemporary Architecture) and the Deutscher Architekturpreis, both for the Neues Museum project in Berlin.

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Spanning residential, commercial and public projects, Chipperfield's understated works are not defined by trademark motifs but by the architect's insistence on answering what he calls the unique "questions" posed by each project.

To paraphrase the jury's citation: "A gifted architect can sometimes almost disappear. We do not see an instantly recognisable David Chipperfield building in different cities, but different David Chipperfield buildings designed specifically for each circumstance."

We pick five of Chipperfield's most celebrated projects in Asia.

 

1. Amorepacific Headquarters, Seoul, South Korea

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Amorepacific,Seoul, South Korea (Photo: @j._h._kim/ Instagram)
Above Amorepacific HQ in Seoul (Photo: @j._h._kim/ Instagram)

Located in the centre of Seoul, the building was created to be the headquarters of AmorePacific, Korea’s largest beauty company. It stands at 30 storeys high and was developed around a central courtyard. The exterior of the building features a series of vertical aluminium fins across the glass facade, providing solar shade to help with natural ventilation and create a transparency with the outdoors.

Three large urban openings connect this central void with the exterior surroundings, providing views over the city and the mountains in the distance and therefore establishing a sense of orientation and belonging. As "hanging gardens", these openings give scale and allow nature to extend from the adjacent park into all parts of the building.

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2. Inagawa Cemetery Chapel and Visitor Center, Hyogo, Japan

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Photo 1 of 2 Inagawa Cemetery Chapel and Visitor Center, Hyogo, Japan (Photo: @mountain_water_com/ Instagram)
Photo 2 of 2 Inagawa Cemetery Chapel and Visitor Center, Hyogo, Japan (Photo: @mountain_water_com/ Instagram)

The Inagawa Cemetery Chapel and Visitor Center was completed in 2017. Inagawa is a hillside municipality in the Hokusetsu Mountain Range of the Hyogo prefecture.

The design, hemmed in by earthy red monolithic buildings, was meant to create a place of solitude and gathering. The buildings are located at the foot of a hill and sit beside a grand flight of steps that stretch up the terraced hillside to a shrine.

To visually guide views up the hillside, the chapel and visitor centre were placed diagonally from each other and are sheltered beneath inclined roofs.

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3. Zhejiang Museum of Natural History, China

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Zhejiang Museum of Natural History, China (Photo: @dca.berlin/Instagram)
Above Zhejiang Museum of Natural History, China (Photo: @dca.berlin/Instagram)

Embedded in the surrounding landscape comprising a large natural park surrounded by bamboo forests and overlooking rice fields in the valley below, the Zhejiang Museum of Natural History comprises eight single-storey, bar-shaped pavilions.

Completed in 2018, the pavilion's staggered composition step down the hillside. This follows the natural topography to minimise the visual impact on the landscape and frame an open garden. 

The planting extends onto the building complex's green roofs, rendered in red ochre to match the clay earth of the hillside site, reinforcing the relationship between the museum and the landscape.

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4. West Bund Museum, Shanghai, China

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West Bund Museum, Shanghai (Photo:  Lcsun/WikiCommons)
Above West Bund Museum, Shanghai (Photo: Lcsun/WikiCommons)

Completed in 2019, Shanghai's West Bund Museum is the Centre Pompidou's first Chinese outpost. Situated on a triangular plot at the northernmost tip of a new public park, where Longteng Avenue and the Huangpu river converge, the complex covers a 22,000 sqm area, with a raised public esplanade above the flood plain surrounding the building, offering views of the river.

The edge of the esplanade on the east side is delineated by a continuous series of steps with landing stages leading to the riverbank. The site offered the opportunity to create a completely freestanding structure, and its location allowed for improved access to both the river and the park.

The museum has a double-height atrium, composed of three main gallery volumes, placed in a pin-wheel formation around a central lobby. This configuration allows for different components of the museum to operate independently. 

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5. Ceramic Art Avenue Taoxichuan, China

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Grand Theatre, Jingdezhen, China (Photo: @dca.berlin/Instagram)
Above Grand Theatre, Jingdezhen, China (Photo: @dca.berlin/Instagram)

The project's goal was to transform an entire urban block in the Chinese city of Taoxichuan into a cultural district that celebrates the city known as China's porcelain capital.

David Chipperfield Architects developed the masterplan for this area, which preserves, restores and converts the existing buildings while complementing them with new buildings. The practice was also appointed to design three buildings within the masterplan: the Grand Theatre, a music academy, and a hotel complex, completed in 2022.

The Grand Theatre is a new brick construction featuring an open atrium supported by monumental mushroom columns, which opens the building to the surroundings.

The hotel complex is situated to the south alongside a new library. These new buildings complement the cultural institutions housed in the historic factory spaces.  

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