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Meet the 2016 Pritzker Prize winner
This year, Alejandro Aravena, a 48-year-old Chilean architect, was named as the Pritzker Prize winner. He is known for his involvement in low cost housing and the reconstruction of cities after natural disasters. He is next in a line of renowned South American architects such as Luis Barragan (1980), Oscar Niemeyer (1988) and Paulo Mendes da Rocha (2006), but he is the first to come from Chile.
The Pritzker Prize awarded by the Hyatt foundation, is globally recognised as the ultimate accolade for the discipline. The award will be presented to Mr. Aravena on 4th April 2016 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.
Santiago – Chili
An internationally recognised career
Alejandro Aravena studied architecture at the Catholic University of Chile from which he graduated in 1992. He taught at Harvard from 2000 to 2005 where he founded ELEMENTAL (see below) together with the engineer Andres Lacobelli. He was also a member of the Pritzker Prize jury from 2009 to 2015. Finally, this year saw him appointed as commissioner of the Venice International Architecture Exhibition.
His projects go beyond the South American borders and reach around the world: United States, Mexico, China, Switzerland, etc.
Jalisco – Mexique
Santiago – Chili
ELEMENTAL: a “Do Tank” rather than a “Think Tank”
His company ELEMENTAL, co-founded in 2001, focuses on projects of public interest with a social impact. They played a central role in the rebuilding of Constitución, one of the towns affected by the 2010 earthquake and subsequent tsunami. The aim was to determine how to rebuild this town, that was almost completely destroyed, in just 100 days. The project is still ongoing. One of the ideas that was put in place is the construction of social housing enabling people to adapt their homes and finish them themselves according to their needs. The living space could therefore be anywhere between 57 m2 and 85 m2. Aravena prefers these high-quality ‘half houses’ over complete, lower-quality houses.
Constitucìon – Chili
Aravena produces outstanding architecture which is accessible to all – that seems clear to us. What do you think?