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Citation from the Jury
Glenn Murcutt is a modernist, a naturalist, an environmentalist, a humanist,
an economist and ecologist encompassing all of these distinguished qualities in
his practice as a dedicated architect who works alone from concept to
realization of his projects in his native Australia. Although his works have
sometimes been described as a synthesis of Mies van der Rohe and the native
Australian wool shed, his many satisfied clients and the scores more who are
waiting in line for his services are endorsement enough that his houses are
unique, satisfying solutions.
Generally, he eschews large projects which would require him to expand his
practice, and give up the personal attention to detail that he can now give to
each and every project. His is an architecture of place, architecture that
responds to the landscape and to the climate.
His houses are fine tuned to the land and the weather. He uses a variety of
materials, from metal to wood to glass, stone, brick and concrete - always
selected with a consciousness of the amount of energy it took to produce the
materials in the first place. He uses light, water, wind, the sun, the moon in
working out the details of how a house will work - how it will respond to its
environment.
His structures are said to float above the landscape, or in the words of the
Aboriginal people of Western Australia that he is fond of quoting, they
"touch the earth lightly." Glenn Murcutt's structures augment their
significance at each stage of inquiry.
One of Murcutt's favorite quotations from Henry David Thoreau, who was also a
favorite of his father, "Since most of us spend our lives doing ordinary
tasks, the most important thing is to carry them out extraordinarily well."
With the awarding of the 2002 Pritzker Architecture Prize, the jury finds that
Glenn Murcutt is more than living up to that adage.
The 2002 Jury
Chairman
J. Carter Brown
Director emeritus, National Gallery of Art
Chairman, U.S. Commission of Fine Arts,
Washington, D.C.
Giovanni Agnelli
Chairman emeritus, Fiat
Torino, Italy
Ada Louise Huxtable
Author and Architectural Critic
New York, New York
Carlos Jimenez
Professor, Rice University School of Architecture
Principal, Carlos Jimenez Studio
Houston, Texas
Jorge Silvetti
Chairman, Department of Architecture
Harvard University, Graduate School of Design
Cambridge, Massachusetts
The Lord Rothschild
Former Chairman of the Board of Trustees, National Gallery
Former Chairman, National Heritage Memorial Fund
London, England
Executive Director
Bill Lacy
State University of New York at Purchase
Purchase, New York
Arkitera
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