Architecture’s most prominent award went this week to David Chipperfield, a British designer who made a major contribution to St. Louis with the modern wing of the St. Louis Art Museum.
When the museum’s East Building opened a decade ago, Chipperfield was in St. Louis from London discussing his work: “What we tried to hold tightly to here, always, was to make good space for art. Which seems, nowadays, a slightly old-fashioned concept in museum design — that an architect should be concerned about how the art looks. But I am a bit old-fashioned.”
On Tuesday, the Pritzker Architecture Prize committee announced Chipperfield, now 69, was its new winner. The jury said, “He has in every case skillfully chosen the tools that are instrumental to the project instead of those that might only celebrate the architect as artist. Such an approach explains how it is that a gifted architect can sometimes almost disappear.”
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The New York Times said “Chipperfield is known for merging elegant, modern spaces with historic buildings,” pointing to St. Louis’ “polished concrete-and-glass counterpart to the Beaux-Arts museum designed by Cass Gilbert for the 1904 World’s Fair.”
The East Building, the main part of a $160 million project, added 210,000 square feet and 21 galleries, a 300-space underground garage and a restaurant to the museum.
When it debuted, the museum was able to show off artwork that had been kept in storage and a new installation of outdoor stone arches by Andy Goldsworthy.
Chipperfield is the 52nd laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, established in 1979 by the late entrepreneur Jay A. Pritzker and his wife, Cindy. Winners receive a $100,000 grant and a bronze medallion.
According to the Associated Press, organizers called Chipperfield’s work — more than 100 projects over four decades ranging from cultural, civic and academic buildings to urban planning to residences, and including a recent addition to Berlin’s famed Museum Island complex — “subtle yet powerful, subdued yet elegant.”
