Christian de Portzamparc

The career of the ‘child prodigy’ of architecture in the 1980s, Christian de Portzamparc, who picked up the Pritzker Prize in 1994 (he was just 50, and the first French laureate), has been irregular. For this reason, the awarding of the Praemium Imperiale seemed a bit out of time, even if justified by prominent works. In this year’s edition of the award, which the Imperial House of Japan and the Japan Art Association give yearly since 1988 – coming with 15 million yen (115,000 euros) – , Portzamparc was acknowledged in the category of Architecture, along with four other artists in the fields of Painting, Sculpture, Music, Theater/Film: the Belgian painter Pierre Alechinsky, the Japanese sculptor Fujiko Nakaya, the Italian conductor Riccardo Muti, and the French actress Catherine Deneuve, respectively. Born in 1944 in Casablanca (Morocco), Christian de Portzamparc – who, from the outset recognized Le Corbusier as his great master – studied at the École Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris. His works include the Cité de la Musique in Paris (1995), the Philharmonie Luxembourg (2005), and two skyscrapers in New York: the LVMH Tower and One 57 (2014).