The start of a new year marks the announcement of the new winner of the Pritzker Prize, which is the most prestigious and coveted award in the field of architecture.
Speculation has already begun, as there are only two weeks left until early March, when the new winner of the Pritzker Prize—the world’s most prestigious award in architecture, which has been awarded to architects from around the globe since 1979—will be announced. Currently recognized as the Nobel Prize of architecture, the prize is administered by the Hyatt Foundation and is awarded each year to an architect or team of architects to highlight and preserve their work.
The jury that awards the prize is composed of professionals of various nationalities—some established and others emerging—who bring diverse and varied perspectives to this prestigious award.
The most recent Latin American member to join the jury is Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena, who was also the fourth professional from the region to receive the award. Aravena was interviewed in February 2018 to explain the jury’s process for selecting the winning projects.
Part of the task involves traveling to see projects—not only those by current nominees but also by past winners, other established architects, and older works—in order to compare the quality of what they designed in the past with the projects currently under evaluation. For example, one of our most recent tasks was to visit the Bangladesh Parliament Building in Dhaka, designed by Louis Kahn. The idea is to try to see if the body of work we are about to award now stands up to that comparison, if it can be equated with it or will reach a similar level. To do that, we have to try to determine whether those works will stand the test of time, to imagine them two or three centuries from now. You could say it’s the exact opposite of awarding the building of the year.
Every year, everyone in the architecture community theorizes and speculates about who might be the next winner. This year, the Chilean website Plataforma Arquitectura—one of the most widely read and popular sites in Latin America—held an open poll to gauge the opinions of its readers and followers. The list of top vote-getters features names from all five continents, including the Danish firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), the American Steven Holl, the Brazilian Carla Juacaba, the Chilean Smiljan Radic, the Burkinabe Francis Kéré, the Colombian Giancarlo Mazzanti, and the Japanese Sou Fujimoto.
The winner of the 2019 edition will be announced in early March. The winner will succeed Indian architect Balkrishna Doshi, a disciple of the Swiss architect Le Corbusier, who was selected in 2018. In Doshi’s case, the jury highlighted his built works as well as his contributions to teaching and the promotion of architecture in his region.