Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena wins prestigious 2016 Pritzker Prize

PanARMENIAN.Net - Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena won the prestigious 2016 Pritzker Prize Wednesday, January 13 earning praise for "powerful" designs that address key social and economic challenges of the 21st century, AFP reports.

"Innovative and inspiring, he shows how architecture at its best can improve people's lives," said Tom Pritzker, chairman of The Hyatt Foundation, which awards the prize.

The 48-year-old Aravena, who is based in Santiago, will receive the $100,000 award and bronze medallion at a ceremony at UN headquarters in New York on April 4. He is the 41st Pritzker laureate, and only the fourth from Latin America.

The Pritzker jury highlighted Aravena's work at ELEMENTAL, a Santiago architectural group that focuses on projects of public interest and social impact.

The group calls itself a "do tank," as opposed to a "think tank."

It has produced more than 2,500 units of affordable housing, including an innovative "half a good house" that allows residents to complete the work themselves, thereby incrementally raising their living standards.

After Chile's 2010 earthquake, ELEMENTAL was enlisted to help rebuild the hard-hit city of Constitucion; the firm drew up a master plan and designed a cultural center and an "incremental" housing project known as Villa Verde.

Aravena also was cited for his buildings at the Universidad Catolica de Chile in Santiago, where he studied and now teaches after a five-year stint at Harvard; they include its schools of architecture, medicine, mathematics and most recently the UC Innovation Center - Anacleto Angelini.

His design for an office building for health care company Novartis is under construction in Shanghai, China. Its office spaces are designed to accommodate different forms of work -- individual, collective, formal and informal.

"His built work gives economic opportunity to the less privileged, mitigates the effects of natural disasters, reduces energy consumption and provides welcoming public space," Pritzker said.