Internationally-acclaimed architect Wang Shu, a former Holcim Awards prize-winner, has been selected as the Pritzker Prize Laureate for 2012. The Pritzker Prize is recognized as one of the highest honors in the world of architecture. This year’s prize hand-over will take place in Beijing on May 25. As cited by the Pritzker Prize jury, Wang Shu’s work is able to transcend the dichotomy between architecture anchored in tradition and architecture looking only toward the future to produce works that are timeless, deeply rooted in context and yet universal.
Last updated: March 01, 2012 Boston, USA
The Pritzker Architecture Prize was established by the Hyatt Foundation in 1979 to each year honor a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision, and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture. It has often been described as “architecture’s most prestigious award” or as “the Nobel of architecture.”
Typical of this unifying approach, the Five Scattered Houses, Ningbo, China project led by Wang Shu won a Holcim Awards Acknowledgement prize in 2005. The series of five structures that reinterpret the traditional building culture were commissioned in 2004 and completed by 2008 in a 25 hectare park in the center of the Yinzhou New Town, Ningbo District. The project manifested an innovative translation of a traditional house typology into a modern dwelling. By promoting the use of indigenous materials and traditional craftsmanship, the work takes an ethically acute stance to the environment as well as its inhabitants.