Christian de Portzamparc wins 2018 Praemium Imperiale Award

"His imaginative architectural style is known for its distinctive features such as bold designs, an artistic approach and the creativity that comes from him also as a watercolor painter," reads the Japan Art Association's laureate description of de Portzamparc. "He is especially esteemed as a designer of concert halls and an urban planner."

"He studied architecture in Paris and New York, and became famous for his creation of the rue des Hautes Formes dwellings in Paris and the large scale project for François Mitterrand called the City of Music (1995), which involved creating music halls of different sizes, a music museum and many dwelling places."

"His important works include NexusII (1991), a residential complex in Fukuoka, LVMH Tower (1999), and two skyscrapers (2015) in New York, the Philharmonie Luxembourg (2005), the City of Arts (2013), a cultural complex in Rio de Janeiro, and the Paris La Défense Arena (2017), an indoor stadium in Nanterre, on the outskirts of Paris."

"Currently he is engaged in large-scale projects as in Casablanca for the larger theater in Africa and in China, for opera house in Shanghai and the Suzhou Cultural Center, scheduled to be completed in 2019."

The list of previous Praemium Imperiale Award winners in the Architecture category includes Kenzo Tange, Tadao Ando, Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, Norman Foster, Alvaro Siza, David Chipperfield, Peter Zumthor, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, and more recently, Rafael Moneo, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Dominique Perrault, and Steven Holl.