Richard Meier
• Born October 12, 1934, age 81.
• He is an American abstract artist and architect, whose
geometric designs make prominent use of the color
white. A winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in
1984, some of his more iconic buildings include
the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art and
the Getty Center in LA.
Richard Meier
• “White is the most wonderful color because
within it you can see all the colors of the
rainbow. The whiteness of white is never just
white; it is almost always transformed by light
and that which is changing; the sky, the
clouds, the sun and the moon.”
~Richard Meier
Richard Meier
• When I am asked what I believe in, I say that I
believe in architecture. Architecture is the
mother of the arts. I like to believe that
architecture connects the present with the
past and the tangible with the intangible.
~Richard Meier
Pritzker Award acceptance speech excerpt
Richard Meier
Getty Center
• A Meier building is a sensuous experience
before it is anything else. It is an exploration
of solid and void and light and texture, and an
essay on composition. Every Richard Meier
building is visually compelling...they are
deeply beautiful.
Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California
Richard Meier
• I believe that architecture has the power to
inspire, to elevate the spirit, to feed both the
mind and the body. It is for me the most
public of the arts.
Renzo Piano
Renzo Piano
• Born 14 September 1937 Age 78
• He is an Italian architect and engineer, who won the Pritzker
Prize in 1998.
• In 2006, Piano was selected by TIME as one of the 100 most
influential people in the world.
• In August 2013 he was appointed Senator for life in the Italian
Senate by President Giorgio Napoliano.
2003/2008 Broad Contemporary
Art Museum
(LACMA Expansion - Phase I)
Los Angeles, U.S.A
2006/2010 The Resnick Pavilion
(LACMA Expansion - Phase II)
Los Angeles, U.S.A
Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, France
Rem Koolhaas
Rem Koolhaas
• Born 17 November 1944) Age 71
• He is a Dutch architect, architectural
theorist, urbanist and Professor in Practice
of Architecture and Urban Design at
the Graduate School of Design at Harvard
University.
• In 2008, Time put him in their top 100 of
The World’s Most Influential People.
Seattle Central
Library, USA, designed
by OMA
CCTV Headquarters in Beijing, China
Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid
• Born 31 October 1950 is an Iraqi-British architect. She is 65 years old
• In 2004 she became the first woman recipient of the Pritzker Architecture
Prize.
• She received the Stirling Prize in 2010 and 2011.
• In 2014 the Heydar Alivev Cultural Centre, designed by her, won the Design
Museum Design of the Year Award, making her the first woman to win the top
prize in that competition.
• In 2015 she became the first woman to be awarded the RIBA Gold Medal
• Her buildings are distinctively neofuturistic, characterized by the "powerful,
curving forms of her elongated structures" with multiple perspective points
and fragmented geometry to evoke the chaos of modern life". She is currently
professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in Austria.
Zaha Hadid
Zaha participated in a competition and won which lead to the ‘Future Energy’
building. The theme of the EXPO was Future Energy which aims to raise awareness of
energy resources, energy efficiency and environmental protection and seek innovative
engineering and architectural solutions to these critical global issues.
Bergisel Ski Jump, Austria
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright
• Born Frank Lincoln Wright, June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959)
• He was an American architect, interior designer, writer, and educator, who
designed more than 1,000 structures, 532 of which were completed.
• Wright believed in designing structures that were in harmony with humanity
and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture.
• Frank Lloyd Wright was an architect for about 70 years.
• His work includes original and innovative examples of many building types,
including offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, and museums. Wright
also designed many of the interior elements of his buildings, such as the
furniture and stained glass.
• Already well known during his lifetime, Wright was recognized in 1991 by the
American Institute of Architects as "the greatest American architect of all time“.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, New York
Michael Graves
Michael Graves
• Michael Graves (July 9, 1934 – March 12, 2015) was an
American architect.
• Graves was known first for his contemporary building designs
and some prominent public commissions that became iconic
examples of Postmodern architecture.
• His recognition grew through designing domestic products
sold by premium Italian housewares maker Alessi, and later
low-cost new designs at stores such as Target and J.C. Penney
in the United States.
• He was a representative of New Urbanism and New Classical
Architecture and formerly designed postmodern buildings,
and was recognized as a major influence in all three
movements.
Walt Disney World Swan at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida
I.M. (Ieoh Ming) Pei
I.M. (Ieoh Ming) Pei
• Born April 26, 1917. He is 98.
• He is commonly known as I. M. Pei, is a Chinese American
architect.
• In the early 1980s, Pei was the focus of controversy when he
designed a glass-and-steel pyramid for the Musee Du Louvre
in Paris.
• Awards in the field of architecture, including the AIA Gold
Medal in 1979 and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in 2003.
• In 1983, he won the Pritzker Prize, sometimes called the
Nobel Prize of architecture.
Bank of China Tower
Louvre Pyramid
Completed in Paris in 1989
The construction of the pyramid triggered a considerable amount of controversy because
many people felt that the futuristic edifice looked quite out of place in front of the Louvre
Museum with its classical architecture.
Others lauded the juxtaposition of contrasting architectural styles as a successful merger of
the old and the new, the classical and the ultra-modern.
Philip Johnson
Philip Johnson
• Born on July 8, 1906, he died on January 25, 2005
• He is a retired UC Berkeley law professor and author who is
considered the father of the intelligent design movement.
• He is a critic of what he calls "Darwinism". By "Darwinism", he
means "fully naturalistic evolution, involving chance
mechanisms and natural selection“ .
The Glass House
Private residence in New Canaan, Connecticut “The Glass House”
Rudolph M. Schindler
Rudolph M. Schindler
• Born in 1887 Vienna - 1953 Los Angeles
• He was an Austrian-born American architect whose most
important works were built in or near LA during the early to
mid-twentieth century.
• He often is associated with the fringes of the modern
movement in architecture.
• His inventive use of complex three-dimensional forms, warm
materials, and striking colors, as well as his ability to work
successfully within tight budgets, however, have placed him as
one of the true Mavericks of early twentieth century
architecture.
Schindler House Los Angeles, California
Frank Gehry
Frank Gehry
• Born February 28, 1929 (age 86) Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• A number of his buildings, including his private residence, have
become world-renowned attractions.
• His works are cited as being among the most important works
of contemporary architecture in the 2010 World Architecture
Survey, which led Vanity Fair to label him as "the most important
architect of our age"
• Gehry's best-known works include the titanium-clad
Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; Walt Disney Concert
Hall in downtown Los Angeles; Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris.
Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain
Walt Disney Concert Hall Built in 1999-2003