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LAWRENCE -- Australian architect Glenn Murcutt, who today was named the 2002 Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate, is teaching at the University of Kansas School of Architecture this week as the distinguished J.L. Constant lecturer.
The Pritzker Prize has been described as architecture's most prestigious award or "the Nobel Prize of architecture." The prize includes a $100,000 grant and a medallion. Chicago's Hyatt Foundation established the annual award in 1979 to honor a living architect whose built work demonstrates "a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture."
Murcutt, 66, lives in Sydney but travels worldwide to teach and lecture to university students. The Pritzker Prize jury cited his work designing environmentally sensitive modernist houses that "respond to their surroundings and climate, as well as being scrupulously energy conscious."
During his stay at KU, Murcutt is scheduled to give lectures, meet with KU architecture students and faculty, and review student work.
"In the KU School of Architecture there is student and faculty interest in sustainable and local-context architectural design," said Associate Dean Bill Carswell. "Glenn Murcutt's visit provides a great opportunity for our students to study with a person who has been doing energy-conscious, earth-friendly, distinctively regionalist modern architecture for many years."
On Monday he will tour several modernist homes in Lawrence that were designed and built by students in the architecture school's "Studio 804" class taught by Dan Rockhill, KU professor of architecture and urban design. The four homes combine equal parts of traditional agro-industrial design and modernist design themes. The houses have won multiple design awards, including selection as a finalist representing the U.S. in the World Architecture Awards in 2001.
Murcutt will give a public lecture at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 17, at the Grand Avenue Temple, 205 E. Ninth St., Kansas City, Mo.
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