Christian de Portzamparc was chosen in 2022. It is Bernard Tschumi’s turn to be awarded the Grand Prix d’Architecture de l’Académie des beaux-arts (Charles Abella Prize). The Franco-Swiss architect wins this famous international prize awarded to an architect for his entire career.
“Like the distinctions it awards in other disciplines, the Academy intends to recognize the exemplary nature of a career in the field of architecture by awarding this prize.“, explained the institution in a press release on Tuesday, July 2, 2024. The prize is accompanied by an amount of 35,000 euros.
Looking back on his career
Bernard Tschumi lives and works in Paris and New York. He is considered by the Academy as “one of the most significant architects of his generation. His atypical career as an architect draws on both teaching and theoretical research. His work, both theoretical and built, emphasizes the relationship between concept and context, space and event, architecture and notion.”
The man studied architecture at ETH Zurich and then taught at the Architectural Association in London. He then headed the Faculty of Architecture Planning and Preservation at Columbia University (New York) from 1988 to 2003. He has written numerous theoretical essays, including Architecture and Disjunction (1994), translated into eight languages.
Projects galore
He was the one who won the Parc de la Villette project in Paris in 1982, Le Fresnoy in Tourcoing (1997), the Acropolis Museum in Athens (2009), the Muséo Parc d’Alésia (2012), the Zéniths concert halls in Rouen and Limoges (2001 and 2007). He also designed universities in New York, Miami and Cincinnati.
Over the past ten years, he has designed the Carnal Dôme in Rolle, the Haagse Passage in The Hague, the second phase of the Vacheron-Constantin factory in Geneva, the Binhai Science Museum near Beijing, and the Centre for Biology, Pharmacy, Chemistry for the University of Paris-Saclay.
His work has been recognized many times, including in 1996 when he received the Grand Prix national d’Architecture and in 2003 the Medal of Honor from the American Institute of Architects in New York. In addition, several exhibitions have been held on his work, including two retrospectives at MoMA (New York) in 1994 and at the Centre Pompidou (Paris) in 2014.
An upcoming exhibition
Bernard Tschumi will receive the Grand Prix d’architecture on December 4, 2024, under the dome of the Palais de l’Institut de France. His work will be presented in an exhibition visible from December 5 to January 26, 2025 at the Comtesse de Caen pavilion of the Académie des beaux-arts (Palais de l’Institut de France).
This year, the jury was composed of renowned architects, including Anne Démians, Marc Barani, Bernard Desmoulin, Pierre-Antoine Gatier, Dominique Perrault, Alain Charles Perrot, Jacques Rougerie, Jean-Michel Wilmotte and Aymeric Zublena, members of the architecture section of the Académie des beaux-arts.
Other great names in architecture have received this prestigious award before Bernard Tschumi. In 2019, the Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza Vieira was recognized, then the Franco-Peruvian architect Henri Ciriani in 2021.
