New York, March 20th 2013 – Fondazione Bisazza (The Bisazza Foundation for Design and Contemporary Architecture) is pleased to announce the European debut of the retrospective exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of Richard Meier’s practice. The new exhibition will be a retrospective of the American architect’s iconic work and the unveiling of a site-specific installation for the Foundation’s permanent collection.

Meier’s oeuvre is a reflection of the continuous search and analysis of concepts perfected over more than half a century of constant work in the field of architecture and design. The absence of color is an intrinsic characteristic of his works; his philosophy is grounded in using light as the main material to give form to his orderly, sculptural, and linear architecture. Profoundly influenced by Le Corbusier, Richard Meier refines his principles of geometrical progression by playing with structure, space and elements of formal precision. “The way that light traverses and cuts through buildings is the interrogative and the principal magic from whence Richard Meier’s projects are born,” states Frank Stella.

In 1984, Mr. Meier was awarded the Pritzker Prize for Architecture, considered the field’s highest honor and he has been the youngest individual architect ever to be awarded this honor.  Meier has since received numerous awards and international recognition including the Royal Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects from the (1989), AIA Gold Medal (1997), the Praemium Imperiale from the Japanese government in recognition of lifetime achievement in the Arts (1997), and the Gold Medal for Architecture (2008) from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1992, the French Government honored him as a Commander of Arts and Letters, and in 1995 he was elected Fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  In 2011 Richard Meier received the AIANY President’s Award and the Sidney Strauss Award from the New York Society of Architects. A leader in the field, Meier has also received honorary degrees from the University of Naples, New Jersey Institute of Technology, The New School for Social Research, Pratt Institute, the University of Bucharest, and North Carolina State University.

Fondazione Bisazza pays tribute to this great architect through a representative selection of his most influential works: fifteen models, more than thirty technical drawings, forty photographs and preliminary sketches and for the first time in Italy some lesser known design objects such as a tableware collection designed for Reed & Barton in collaboration with Swid Powell.

From the Getty Center in Los Angeles, which was begun in 1984 and completed in 1997, to the Neugebauer House in Naples, Florida; from the High Museum in Atlanta to the project for the competition to build the World Trade Center Memorial in New York, and the Arp Museum project in Rolandseck, Germany, which traverses a mountain, the works of the American architect are recognizable geometrical and spatial compositions. The Richard Meier. Architecture and Design exhibition also features some of his most famous creations in Italy: the Ara Pacis museum complex in Rome and The Jubilee Church in Tor Tre Teste completed to mark the occasion of the Jubilee in 2000.

The Bisazza Foundation is proud to be able to enhance its Permanent Collection with an oeuvre envisioned and created by Richard Meier especially for the Montecchio Maggiore spaces. The Internal Time project is a geometric garden – , a stylized wood of imposing vertical elements in white mosaic in which to wander or avail of the single horizontal module, which houses a seat dedicated to meditation.

Piero and Rossella Bisazza, President and Vice President of the Bisazza Foundation, comments: “Richard Meier is one of the most important and influential voices in international architecture. Considering the Fondazione Bisazza vocation for making original contributions and inserting itself into participating in the cultural debate of contemporary architecture, we wanted to pay homage to an architect of the caliber of Mr. Meier. We are honored that the retrospective and the installation we are hosting has never before been seen, collaborating directly with Richard Meier & Partners Architects specifically for the Fondazione Bisazza.”

Maria Cristina Didero, Director of the Foundation, comments: “In the year of the fiftieth anniversary of Richard Meier & Partners Architects, we are delighted to have collaborated with the studio to create an exhibition dedicated to Meier’s career, especially designed for the spaces of the Fondazione Bisazza. After the John Pawson “Plain Space” solo show and the Arik Levy design installation titled “Experimental Growth,” both presented last year, we are proud to open the 2013 exhibition program with another eminent player on the architecture and contemporary design scene.

Richard Meier. Architecture and Design is organized by The Fondazione Bisazza and Richard Meier & Partners Architects.