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Architecture Is a Team Sport; So why do they award the Pritzker Prize to just one person?
Posted Tuesday, April 1, 2008, at 11:42 AM ET
The Pritzker Prize, which this year was awarded to French architect Jean Nouvel, is often referred to as the Nobel Prize of architecture. It is an inaccurate analogy. Nobel Prizes, whether in literature, chemistry, or physics, are given to individuals for individual work; buildings are the result of teamwork. Sometimes Nobels are awarded to small teams of scientists, and researchers do have assistants, but not 140 of them, which is the size of Ateliers Jean Nouvel, whose head office is in Paris but which maintains site offices in London, Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, and Minneapolis.
Credit to Nouvel for winning the Prize; this sudden tide of articles about the Pritzker is by no means indicative of any disgruntledness by the media; events such as this always drum up strong opinions. Here, Rybcznski hits bullseye in this piece, because architecture is and was never a game played by one individual, but by countless pairs of eyes and hands who work together to make things happen. Without a doubt, it takes vision and talent to realize the architecture that has put Nouvel and his Pritzker contemporaries where they now stand; but maybe some day there’ll be a prize for all the team players out there who are regularly left out of the awards ceremony year in year out.
Read more at www.Slate.com.
JJ is the co-founder of FiveFootWay Magazine and is based in New York.
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Awards are just a way of acknowledging outstanding efforts by those in their respective industry.It helps in adding credibility and gives leverage to that particular effort.Its unfortunate that only one person receives it, but it would be quite difficult to give an award to 140 people at one venue, don’t you think?
Yep, I agree with the very comment that architecture is definitely a collaborative act. Therefore, I think that it makes more sense for the award to go to a team — if the purpose is to give the award to notable architecture per se — or go to an individual if the aim of this award is to recognize an individual who “understands” the nature of things as a means of cultural-aesthetic practice. Say, Paulo Mendez De Rocha, a 2006 Priztker Winner, was a solo architecture who only works with a few people, who want to be learn from him through apprenticeship. In this sense, Paulo is the Priztker Prize Awardee in the individual sense.
More and more, you start to think that architectural prizes like the Pritzker can no longer represent the entire profession with just a single award. In other words, Non is probably correct in his acknowledgement of Mendez De Rocha’s individual achievement in ’solo’ architecture - the Pritzker, in order to stay relevant, may need to alter its structure by rewarding more architects dealing with very blatantly different modes of practice in today’s varied architectural marketplace.