David Chipperfield in front of the James-Simon-Galerie in Berlin in 2019.
Photographer: Sean Gallup/Getty Images EuropeDesign
David Chipperfield, Champion of Civic Architecture, Wins Pritzker Prize
The understated work of the British architect represents a departure from the attention-grabbing approach of past winners.
On its opening weekend in 2009, more than 35,000 Berliners queued up to see the restored Neues Museum, an iconic civic building and historical collection pummeled by Allied bombs during World Ward II and left to languish under Soviet authority. The line along Berlin’s Museum Island stretched half a mile, despite the fact that, for this preview, there were no artifacts yet on view.
They just came to see the building, rescued from oblivion by the British architect David Chipperfield.