The Pritzker Prize is the most important award in the field of architecture, awarded to a living architect whose built work "has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity through the art of architecture." The Prize rewards individuals, not entire offices, as took place in 2000 (when the jury selected Rem Koolhaas instead of his firm OMA) or in 2016 (with Alejandro Aravena selected instead of Elemental); however, the prize can also be awarded to multiple individuals working together, as took place in 2001 (Herzog & de Meuron), 2010 (Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA), and 2017 (Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem, and Ramon Vilalta of RCR Arquitectes).
Kimbell Art Museum / Louis Kahn. Image Courtesy of Xavier de Jauréguiberry
AD Classics presents you with some of the greatest buildings of the past that have influenced and shaped architecture today. Throughout ArchDaily's 13 years, more than 200 classics were published, and for this edition, we have rounded up the top 20 most visited Architecture Classics to date.
Built on a cluster of 118 small islands in the shallow Venetian Lagoon, the city of Venice, Italy, has captivated the imagination of architects and tourists alike. The area has been inhabited since ancient times, becoming a major financial and maritime power during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, as proven through the rich architecture that characterizes the city to this day. With influences from the Byzantine, Gothic, and Renaissance styles, the city represents a palimpsest of architectural narratives, overlapping and influencing each other. In recent years, Venice has become a major attraction for architects drawn to the La Biennale di Venezia, the most important Architectural Exhibition featuring national pavilions, exhibitions, and events to explore new concepts and architectural innovations.
Beyond the Biennale, Venice itself is an open-air museum for architecture lovers. While the city is best known for its historical buildings, Modernist and contemporary interventions add a new layer of interest, with many contemporary architects working with the historical fabric, like OMA’s intervention and rehabilitation of Fondaco dei Tedeschi, or David Chipperfield’s renovation of Procuratie Vecchie, one of the buildings that define Piazza San Marco. In addition to what the city has to offer, the site of the Venice Biennale is also marked by interventions by famous architects such as Carlo Scarpa, Sverre Fehn, and Alvar Aalto, made permanent due to their outstanding qualities.
Modernist architecture came about in the early 20th century as a response to large-scale changes in technology, construction, and society; particularly through the use of glass, steel, and reinforced concrete. The style was typically associated with the function of buildings from an analytical viewpoint, rational use of materials, the elimination of ornamentation, and openness to structural innovation.
Paul Tunge is a Norwegian writer, director, and cinematographer of Arthouse Films who has been involved in film production since the early 2000s. Having written, directed, shot, and produced four independent films, alongside 3 documentaries, each of his projects has been featured during major film festivals across all continents, in galleries, and various national cinemas and cinematheques.
1997 Pritzker Prize laureate Sverre Fehn (August 14th 1924 – February 23rd 2009) was a leader in Post World War II Scandinavian architecture. “His work has an intuitive confidence in how to use the Nordic landscape and its particular light conditions within the built culture, and yet throughout his career each period has reflected a refined sensitivity to international changes and attitudes in architecture,” said his close collaborator Per Olaf Fjeld. “It can be compared to a poetic work conceived on an isolated mountain by a writer with an uncanny, intuitive sense of what is going on in the towns below.” [1]
This article was originally published on March 30, 2016. To read the stories behind other celebrated architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section.
Three were originally invited to draw up plans for a ‘Nordic’ pavilion: the Finnish partnership Reima and Raili Pietilä, Sverre Fehn from Norway, and the Swede, Klas Anshelm. Following the selection of Fehn’s proposal in 1959, Gotthard Johansson wrote in the Svenska Dagbladet of the project’s “stunning simplicity [...], without too many architectural overtones”[1] – a proposal for a space able to unite a triumvirate of nations under one (exceptional) roof.
Though architectural history is replete with bricks, stones, and steel, there is no rule that states that architecture must be ‘solid’. Sverre Fehn, one of the most prominent architects of postwar Norway, regularly made use of heavy materials like concrete and stone masonry in his projects [1]. In this way, his proposal for the Nordic Pavilion at the Osaka World Expo in 1970 could be seen as an atypical exploration of a more delicate structure. Representing a very different aspect of ‘Modernity’ than his usual work, Fehn’s “breathing balloon” pavilion stands not only in contradiction to Fehn’s design canon, but to that of traditional architecture as a whole.
The Nordic nations—Finland, Norway and Sweden—have reached a pivotal point in their collective, and individual, architectural identities. The Grandfathers of the universal Nordic style—including the likes of Sverre Fehn, Peter Celsing, Gunnar Asplund, Sigurd Lewerentz, Alvar Aalto, and Eero Saarinen—provided a foundation upon which architects and designers since have both thrived on and been confined by. The Nordic Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Biennale—directed by Alejandro Aravena—will be the moment to probe: to discuss, argue, debate and challenge what Nordic architecture really is and, perhaps more importantly, what it could be in years to come.
We're asking for every practice (and individual) across the world who have built work in Finland, Norway and Sweden in the past eight years to submit their project(s) and be part of the largest survey of contemporary Nordic architecture ever compiled.
Update: the Open Call for In Therapy closed on the 24th January 2016.
Norwegian architect and Pritzker LaureateSverre Fehn’s original drawings for the Nordic Pavilion in Venice are to be presented alongside Ferruzzi’s monochromatic photographs of the building in an exhibition at the National Museum of Architecture in Oslo. Venice: Fehn’s Nordic Pavilion documents the incredible task undertaken by Fehn who, at the age of thirty-four, won the competition to design the pavilion and subsequently won international acclaim when the building was completed in 1962.
.jpg?1570002957 "La Muralla Roja / Ricardo Bofill. Image Courtesy of Ricardo Bofill")
