Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura is the winner of this year’s Pritzker Prize, and the second man from Portugal to receive the award. He has built a number of works, including the Burgo Tower, a subway in Porto, a convent-turned-inn in Amares, and the Paula Rego Museum in Cascais. "His buildings have a unique ability to convey seemingly conflicting characteristics—power and modesty, bravado and subtlety, bold public authority and a sense of intimacy—at the same time,” said the prize jury chairman. The jury described his heralded stadium in Braga, Portugal (left), with its granite mountain-like face, as “muscular, monumental and very much at home within its powerful landscape."
Christopher Lee / Getty Images; Roberto Santorini (inset)
Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizama, the lead architects of the Japanese firm SANAA, were awarded the 2010 Pritzker Prize. The jury praised the duo’s “deceptively simple” buildings for “[standing] in direct contrast with the bombastic.” Their works include the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City and Glass Pavilion for the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, and they are currently working on a branch of the Louvre in northern France. Sejima is just the second woman to win the prize. Sejima says she and Nishizama strive to make “architecture like a park.”
Zumthor, the son of a Swiss cabinet-maker, is best known for the Thermal Baths in Vals, Switzerland (left). The 66-year-old architect created many of his most famous works in Switzerland, but is also noted for his Field Chapel to Saint Nikolaus von der Flue in Germany and the Kolumba Museum in Cologne. The baths, completed in 1996, were made from local quartzite and slabs of concrete.
Miro Kuzmanovic / Reuters
Frenchman Nouvel is most famous for the stunning Cartier Foundation in Paris (left), which embodies his courageous, postmodern style. Nouvel, 54, is also renowned for the technologically advanced Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. One of the building's facades is operated by photoelectric cells that open and close automatically in response to light.
Philippe Ruault; Inset: Ateliers Jean Nouvel
Rogers is a lover of cities: His urban vision of the future includes richly layered places where living, leisure, learning, and working overlap. Born in Italy to British parents in 1933, Rogers' international flair is visible in his work. The Centre Pompidou in Paris (left), the headquarters for Lloyd's of London, and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg are a few of his pioneering masterpieces.
Getty Images; Inset: Dima Gavrysh / AP Photo
Iraq-born Zaha Hadid was the first (and so far only) woman to win the Pritzker. She designed the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, Ohio (left), which uses multiple perspective points to reflect the chaos of modern life. The 58-year-old Hadid has been outspoken about making a name for herself in a male-dominated field. At the Rosenthal Center opening, she wore a T-shirt that read: "Would they call me a diva if I were a guy?"
Steve Double, TCS / ZUMA Press; Inset:
Koolhaas began his career as a writer, penning Delirious New York, a manifesto on Manhattan architecture, before he had ever designed a building. The 64-year-old Dutch master pioneered a radical design for the Seattle Public Library (left), and also designed the Lille Grand Palais, and the Netherlands Dance Theatre.
Courtesy of SPL; Inset: Luis Gene, AFP / Getty Images
As head of Foster + Partners, the English architect has built projects such as the Hearst Tower in New York (left), the world's largest airport in Hong Kong, and the new Great Court for the British Museum. Foster, 64, also designed a building known as "The Gherkin" in London, which serves as the headquarters for Swiss Re.
Brian Zak / Sipa Press; Inset: AP Photo
Renzo Piano was born into a family of Italian builders. He co-designed the Centre Pompidou in Paris with Richard Rogers, and once described it as "a joyful urban machine...a creature that might have come from a Jules Verne book." His buildings--which also include new The New York Times headquarters and the home of the Menil Collection in Houston (left)--evoke an atmosphere of serenity.
Courtesy of Menil Museum; Inset: AP Photo
The American architect known for his intricate, complex buildings coined the term "less is a bore" as a response to Mies van der Rohe's credo "less is more." He designed the Gordon Wu Hall (left) at Princeton, his alma mater, and the Sainsbury Wing in the National Gallery in London. The 73-year-old Venturi is a principal in Venturi Scott Brown, the Philadelphia firm he founded with his wife, architect Denise Scott Brown.
Tom Bernard; Inset: Frank Hanswijk
Eighty-year-old Frank Gehry's career took off with the design of his own home in Santa Monica, California, which made use of unconventional materials, such as chain-link fencing. Renowned for his the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, the Experience Museum Project in Seattle, and the IAC building (left), home of The Daily Beast.
Courtesy of IAC; Inset: AP Photo
Gordon Bunshaft, who died in 1990 at the age of 79, designed the Lever House in New York (left) and the Beinecke Rare Book Library in Yale during his celebrated career. The 24-story Lever House, built in 1952, standardized the International Style for corporate America's office buildings. It's now an international landmark.
Newscom; Inset: AP Photo
The legendary Oscar Niemeyer designed Brazil's entire capital, Brasilia, in the form of an airplane. Some of his other well-known works include "The Eye" in Curitiba, Brazil, and the Contemporary Art Museum in Rio de Janeiro (left), nicknamed "the spaceship." The legacy of Niemeyer, now 101, has come under attack recently, and one of his newer works in Cuba, honoring the Cuban resistance, faced serious criticism.
Renowned for his clean, white buildings--particularly museums--Meier became the youngest architect to win the Pritzker in 1984. Now 74, his most famous works include the Getty Museum in Los Angeles (left) and the High Museum in Atlanta.
David McNew / Getty Images; Inset: Peter Kramer / AP Photo
Pei, a Chinese immigrant who arrived in the U.S. in 1935, designed the east building of the National Gallery of Art (left) in Washington D.C. The museum, along with all of Pei's work, highlights the functionalist aesthetic of modernist architecture. Pei, 92, also designed the extension of the Louvre in Paris--and the now-iconic pyramid that stands in its courtyard.
Newscom; Inset: AP Photo
