Frei Otto was born in Siegmar, Germany, on May 31, 1925, and grew up in Berlin. “Frei” in German means “free”; his mother thought of the name after attending a lecture on freedom. Otto’s father and ...

“We will hold to that which is difficult, because it is difficult … and by its difficulty is worthwhile.” That’s a quote from architect Thom Mayne in a monograph about his firm, Morphosis, which he ...

Born in Rotterdam, Rem Koolhaas spent four years of his youth in Indonesia, where his father served as director of a newly formed cultural institute. Following in the footsteps of his literary father, ...

Join us in welcoming Anne Lacaton and Hashim Sarkis as newest members of the Pritzker Prize Jury. Click here to learn more about our distinguished jurors. Photo of Hashim Sarkis courtesy of Justin A.

The architecture of Norwegian Sverre Fehn is a fascinating and exciting combination of modern forms tempered by the Scandinavian tradition and culture from which it springs. He gives great primacy in ...

Architect and Professor Wang Shu was born in 1963 in Urumqi, a city in Xinjiang, the western most province of China. He received his first degree in architecture in 1985 and his Masters degree in 1988 ...

José Rafael Moneo was born in the small town of Tudela, Navarra, Spain in May of 1937. His mother, Teresa, was the daughter of a magistrate from Aragón. His father, Rafael, whose family roots were in ...

“Since the beginning of his architectural career in the 1970s, Frenchman Jean Nouvel has broken the aesthetic of modernism and post-modernism to create a stylistic language all his own. He places ...

Toyo Ito was born on June 1, 1941 in Keijo (Seoul), Korea (Japanese). His father was a business man with a special interest in the early ceramic ware of the Yi Dynasty of Korea and Japanese style ...

Fumihiko Maki calls himself a modernist, unequivocally. His buildings tend to be direct, at times understated, and made of metal, concrete and glass, the classic materials of the modernist age, but ...

Danish architect Jørn Utzon was born in 1918. While in secondary school, he began helping his father, director of a shipyard in Alborg, Denmark, and brilliant naval architect, by studying new designs, ...

Norman Foster was born in Manchester in 1935. After graduating from Manchester University School of Architecture and City Planning in 1961 he won a Henry Fellowship to Yale University, where he gained ...