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For First Time Ever, Pritzker Awarded to Three Architects

This year’s prize winners highlight the importance of collaboration—as well as the integration of landscape—within the architectural profession.

The 2017 Pritzker Prize winners have been announced: Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem, and Ramon Vilalta, the three Spanish architects who make up the firm RCR Arquitectes.

This is the first time that the award has been given to architects working collaboratively together.

The jury emphasized the strong sense of place and context in the trio’s work, which is particularly noted in their integration of landscape, as well as their mastery of materiality and transparency. In the words of Glenn Murcutt, jury chair: “The collaboration of these three architects produces uncompromising architecture of a poetic level, representing timeless work that reflects great respect for the past, while projecting clarity that is of the present and the future.”

Part of the firm’s rootedness in the present is expressed in the way their works balance a sense of locality and, at the same time, universality. The jury citation touched on this conflict between globalization and localism, stating that, “Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem and Ramon Vilalta tell us that it may be possible to have both. They help us to see, in a most beautiful and poetic way, that the answer to the question is not ‘either/or’ and that we can, at least in architecture, aspire to have both; our roots firmly in place and our arms outstretched to the rest of the world.”

To learn more about these architects’ work, we suggest this extensive article on ArchDaily. And let us know what you think of the selection for the 2017 laureates in the comments below.

Soulages Museum, 2014, Rodez, France, In collaboration with G. Trégouët
Row House, 2012, Olot, Girona, Spain
Les Cols Restaurant Marquee, 2011, Olot, Girona, Spain

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