Rem Koolhaas

Rem Koolhaas is that rare combination of visionary and executor, philosopher and pragmatist, theorist and prophet, an architect whose ideas about buildings and urban planning made him one of the world's most discussed contemporary architects even before his projects came to fruition. He did all this through his writings and discussions with students, often provoking controversy by going outside the boundaries of convention. He is as well known for his books, regional and global plans, academic explorations with student groups, as he is for his bold, strident and provocative architecture.

His appearance in the late seventies with his book "Delirious New York" was the beginning of two extraordinary decades in which his works, projects, plans, exhibitions and studies have resonated across the professional and academic landscape, becoming a lightning rod for both criticism and praise.

One of his first plans for the extension of the Dutch Parliament aroused such interest that other commissions followed. The Dutch Dance Theatre in The Hague was one of the first realised projects to receive critical acclaim. Since then, Koolhaas' commissions have varied in scale, from an extraordinarily ingenious and humane house in Bordeaux to the masterplan and the gigantic convention centre in Lille, both in France. The Bordeaux house was designed to adapt to the extraordinary conditions of use of a client confined to a wheelchair without sacrificing his quality of life. If he had only done the Bordeaux project, his place in history or architecture would be assured. Add to this a lively centre for educational life, an Educatorium (a word invented for a learning factory) in Utrecht, as well as housing in Japan, cultural centres and other residences in France and the Netherlands, and proposals for such things as an airport island in the North Sea, and they reveal a talent of extraordinary dimensions.

He has demonstrated on many occasions his ability and creative talent to tackle seemingly intractable or constricting problems with brilliant and original solutions. In each design there is a democratic and fluid organisation of spaces and functions with an unconscious flow of circulation that ultimately dictates an unprecedented new architectural form. His work is as much about ideas as it is about buildings.

His architecture is based on essence, on materialised ideas. He is an architect at ease with the future and in close communication with his fast pace and changing configurations. In his projects, one can perceive the intensity of thought that forms the structure that gives rise to a house, a convention centre, a campus plan or a book. He has firmly established himself in the pantheon of significant architects of the last century and the dawn of this one. For more than twenty years of accomplishing his goals - defining new kinds of relationships, both theoretical and practical, between architecture and the cultural situation - and for his contributions to the built environment, as well as for his ideas, he is awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize.