Jacques Herzog & Pierre de Meuron

The architecture of Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron combines the art of an age-old profession with the freshness of the technical skills of a new century. The two architects' roots in European tradition combine with today's technology in extraordinarily ingenious architectural solutions for their clients' needs, ranging from a modest train changing station to a totally new approach to winery design.

The catalogue of his works reflects this diversity of interests and achievements. Through their homes, municipal and commercial structures, museums and master planning, they show a sure command of their design talent that has resulted in a distinguished body of completed projects.

The beginnings of most architectural firms consist of small projects with tight budgets. It is these first buildings with great limitations that test an architect's talent for finding original solutions to often ordinary and utilitarian commissions. In the case of Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, the railway signal box was such a project. They transformed a nondescript structure in a railway yard into a dramatic and artistic work of industrial architecture, captivating by day and night.

The two architects have created a major body of built work over the past twenty years, the largest and most spectacular in size and scale being the conversion of a giant power station on the Thames into the new Tate Gallery of Modern Art, a highly acclaimed centrepiece of London's millennium celebration.

This kind of ingenuity and imagination continues to characterise their work, whether it is a factory in Basel with screen-printed facades or a winery in California with thick medieval walls made of stacked stones that allow air and light to penetrate the building, giving winemaking a sacred aura. Intuitive architecture students discovered this duo long before the rest of the world. Both directors have been in demand internationally as professors at prestigious universities where they have followed the tradition in architecture of passing on experience from one generation to the next.

The Rudin House in France is yet another representation of their teaching spread by example. Here, they set about the task of building a small house that would represent the quintessential distillation of the word "house"; the drawing of a child with crayons, impossible to reduce to something simpler, simpler and more straightforward. And they placed it on a pedestal to emphasise its iconic qualities.

These two architects, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, use the enduring palette of brick, stone, glass and steel with intensity and passion to express new solutions in new forms. The jury is pleased to award them the 2001 Pritzker Architecture Prize for promoting the art of architecture, a significant contribution to the definition of architecture as a major art form in this new century and millennium.