Rem Koolhaas Wins Pritzker Prize - Brief Article

Art in America, July, 2000

Architecture's most prestigious award, the $100,000 Pritzker Prize, has this year been given to Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. The prize is sponsored by the Hyatt Foundation. Koolhaas is known for the cool conceptualism he brings to his designs, his embrace of urban living, and his desire to integrate architecture and city planning. He heads the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, which he co-founded in London in 1975 (now based in Rotterdam). Koolhaas has been the subject of numerous museum exhibitions, including a 1994-95 show at New York's Museum of Modern Art.

Among Koolhaas's better known projects are the Netherlands Dance Theatre in The Hague (1987), the Nexus Housing complex in Fukuoka, Japan (1991), the Rotterdam Kunsthal (1992), the Euralille trade and transportation center and the Grand Palais in Lille (both 1994), as well as a family house in Bordeaux designed to accommodate a father confined to a wheelchair (1998). He also designed the interiors of the 2nd Stage Theatre (1999) and Lehmann Maupin Gallery (1996) in New York.

Koolhaas, as noted for his ideas as his realized projects, has authored three sometimes humorous books that expound his dynamic, commerce-friendly urbanology, Delirious New York (1978), S, M, L, XL (1994) and the upcoming The Harvard Guide to Shopping. The guide is the outcome of urban studies courses he teaches each year at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Coincidentally, Koolhaas was recently commissioned to design three new spaces for Prada (which has an art space in Milan) in San Francisco, Los Angles and Manhattan's SoHo. Each store will have a public space that can be used for performances and lectures. In the SoHo store, for example, shoe displays will convert into theater seats.