CAMPO BAEZA recipient of the ARNOLD W. BRUNNER MEMORIAL PRIZE 2013

The Spanish architect Alberto Campo Baeza is the recipient of the ARNOLD W. BRUNNER MEMORIAL PRIZE 2013 by the AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS. After the PRITZKER, this is the most prestigious award handed down by the American Architects.

Casa Olnick Spanu. Courtesy of Alberto Campo Baeza.

This is the fourth major prize Alberto Campo Baeza receives this year. Having picked up the UPM Prize for Excellence in Teaching in Madrid on January 25th and the Heinrich Tessenow Gold Medal in Hamburg on January 30th, and the International Award Architecture in Stone 2013 on April, in Verona, he will travel to New York in May to receive this latest prize.

The Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize was bestowed on Louis I. KAHN in 1960.

Almost all PRITZKER prize-winners were previously honored with the Arnold W. Brunner: Gordon BUNSHAFT in 1955, I.M. PEI in 1961, Kevin ROCHE in 1965, Richard MEIER in 1972, Robert VENTURI in 1973, James STIRLING in 1976, Franck O. GEHRY in 1983, Tadao ANDO in 1991, Norman FOSTER in 1992, Rafael MONEO in 1993, Renzo PIANO in 1994, Alvaro SIZA in 1998, Fumihiko MAKI in 1999, Kazuyo SEJIMA and Ryue NISHIZAWA in 2002, Hans HOLLEIN in 2004, Jean NOUVEL in 2006, Peter ZUMTHOR in 2008 and TOYO ITO in 2000.

Inaugurated in 1955, the American Academy of Arts and Letters bestows the annual Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture on “an architect who has made a significant contribution to architecture as an art”.

The works by Alberto Campo Baeza described as uncompromising, sober and essential. He believes in Architecture as a built idea. And he claims that the two main components of Architecture are gravity that builds space and light that builds time.

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The MA: Andalucia’s Museum of Memory / Alberto Campo Baeza. Courtesy of Alberto Campo Baeza.

Entre catedrales, Cadiz, Spain, 2009. Courtesy of Alberto Campo Baeza.

Caja Granada 2001. Courtesy of Alberto Campo Baeza.

2007. Benetton Nursery. Treviso-Venecia, Italia. Cortesía de Alberto Campo Baeza.

Oficinas en Zamora, 2012. Cortesía de Alberto Campo Baeza.

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ALBERTO CAMPO BAEZA

Alberto Campo Baeza. Born in Valladolid (1946), where his grandfather was an architect, from the age of two he lived in CADIZ where he saw the LIGHT. From his father he inherited a spirit of ANALYSIS and from his mother the determination to be an ARCHITECT.

He lives in Madrid, where he moved to study Architecture. His first professor was Alejandro de la Sota, who instilled in him the ESSENTIAL architecture that he is still trying to erect. He is a PROFESSOR at the Madrid School of Architecture, ETSAM, where he has been a tenured professor for more than 25 years.

He has taught at the ETH in Zurich and the EPFL in Lausanne as well as the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. And in Dublin and Naples, Virginia and Copenhagen. And at the BAUHAUS in Weimar and at Kansas State University. He spent a year as a research fellow at COLUMBIA University in New York in 2001 and again in 2011. He has given many lectures and has received many awards like the TORROJA for his Caja Granada building. And he was awarded the Buenos Aires Biennial 2009 for his Nursery for Benetton in Venice and his MA Museum in Granada. He has recently been nominated by the American Academy of Arts and Letters for the prestigious Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize of 2010.

His works have been widely recognized. From the single family houses Casa Turégano and Casa de Blas, both in Madrid, to Casa Gaspar, Casa Asencio and Casa Guerrero in Cádiz. And the Olnick Spanu House in Garrison, New York, the Centro BIT in Inca-Mallorca, the Caja de Granada Savings Bank and the MA, the Museum of Andalusian Memory, both in Granada, and a nursery for Benetton in Venice. And Between Cathedrals in Cádiz, and just recently a building for Offices in Zamora (2012). And the construction of the new Offices for Benetton in Samara, Russia, which is about to begin.

And more than 20 editions of a BOOK with his texts “LA IDEA CONSTRUÍDA” [THE BUILT IDEA] have been published in several languages. A fourth edition of “PENSAR CON LAS MANOS”, a second compilation of his writings, has just been published. And just now “PRINCIPIA ARCHITECTONICA”, a collection of his texts written during his sabbatical year at Columbia University in New York in 2011.

He believes in Architecture as a BUILT IDEA. And he believes that the principle components of Architecture are GRAVITY that constructs SPACE and LIGHT that constructs TIME.

He has exhibited his work in the CROWN HALL by Mies at Chicago’s IIT and at the PALLADIO Basilica in Vicenza. And in the Urban Center in New York. And at the Saint Irene Church in Istanbul. In 2009 the prestigious MA Gallery of Toto in Tokyo made an anthological exhibition of his work that in 2011 was in the MAXXI in Rome.

Act.>. 04-2012

Published on: April 20, 2013

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