In a surprise decision, a Brazilian architect with little international reputation comes away with the field's top honor.
"Paulo Mendes da Rocha, a Brazilian Modernist who has worked extensively in his home country for decades but had limited international exposure, has won the 2006 Pritzker Architecture Prize, the field's highest honor. He will receive the $100,000 grant at a ceremony in Istanbul, Turkey, on May 30.
His work, which includes stadiums, museums and chapels, is marked by an integration with nature and muscular use of geometry, as in the concrete flying-saucer-like Paulistano Athletic Club in São Paulo. Many of these buildings, including his recently completed Patriarch Plaza, are in that city, where the architect lives with his wife."
"The citation from the Pritzker jury praised him for his command of 'the principles and language of Modernism,' as well as his 'deep understanding of the poetics of space. He modifies the landscape and space with his architecture, striving to meet both social and aesthetic human needs.'"
Read the full story: A Pritzker surprise in Sao Paulo
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