GSD Professor Koolhaas Wins Prestigious Pritzker Award

Rem Koolhaas, a professor at the Graduate School of Design (GSD), has been awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize, often described as the discipline's highest honor.

Koolhaas, who is professor in practice of architecture and urban design, was chosen from a pool of more than 500 nominees worldwide.

He will fly to Jerusalem at the end of May for the awards ceremony, at which time he'll receive a $100,000 grant and a bronze medallion.

The award annually honors a living architect based on built work that has produced "consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture," according to the prize committee's website.

Koolhaas said his being chosen was significant because he interprets architecture differently from past recipients.

"I think I've always been somebody who believes that architecture is much more than building," he said. "This is the first time they've given the award to somebody with those ideas."

Assistant Professor of Architecture Ronald Witte agreed that the choice of Koolhaas has changed perceptions of the prize.

"It's often awarded for past accomplishments, and while Koolhaas certainly has significant past achievements, there's a sort of promise in that the award was given to him," Witte said. "He's in the process of [creating] future accomplishments."

Koolhaas has written several books and is currently advising GSD theses for the ongoing "Project on the City," which examines the effects of globalization in urban areas.

He said he considers his teaching and research work as much a part of architecture as his building projects.

But his hundreds of buildings worldwide have also garnered acclaim. A Bordeaux residence he designed for a man confined to a wheelchair was named Best Design of 1998 by Time magazine.

"Had he only done the Bordeaux Project, his niche in the history of architecture would have been secure," the jury's prize citation read.

Some of Koolhaas's current projects include a public library in Seattle, stores for Prada in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco and a student center for the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.

He is the founder of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, a design firm in Rotterdam.

A journalist and screenwriter until the age of 25, Koolhaas said he is a relative latecomer to architecture.

He said there are surprising similarities between writing scripts and designing buildings.

"You have to invent things for people to do [in screenplays], and you have to work with episodes in architecture and string them together," he said.

Associate Professor of Architecture Preston S. Cohen said many critics acknowledge Koolhaas as the leading architect of his time.

"The force of his thinking is unparalleled," Cohen said. "He's someone you want to play with intellectually."

Cohen and others said that it was "inevitable" that Koolhaas would win the Pritzker Prize.

Chair of the Architecture Department Jorge M. Silvetti, who was also a member of the prize jury, organized a reception today honoring Koolhaas.

Of the several hundred people who attended the reception, the majority of the faculty attendees were from other departments, evidence of Koolhaas's interdisciplinary work, Witte said.

Koolhaas is the 23rd Pritzker Prize laureate and the first from the Netherlands. Past Harvard affiliates who have also won the award are Sert Professor in Architecture Jose R. Moneo, who was the 1996 laureate, and Christian de Portzamparc, a lecturer who won the prize in 1994.