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
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.
See also: 5 exquisite modern Asian homes in Malaysia