Thom Mayne, FAIA, who founded his now internationally renowned firm Morphosis in 1972, has been chosen as the 2005 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. This award celebrates a three-decade career in which the Los Angeles-based architect has garnered 54 national, state, and local AIA Awards as well as numerous other honors around the world. The 61-year-old Mayne is the first American Pritzker Prize recipient in 14 years.

An architect whose time has come
A native of Waterbury, Conn., Mayne earned his BArch from the University of Southern California School of Architecture in 1968 and his MArch from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design in 1978. In between came work as a planner for Victor Gruen. In 1972, the same year that Morphosis (which means “to be in formation”) was born, he and several colleagues created the influential and progressive SCI-arc, the Southern California Institute of Architecture. Mayne began building a reputation as a theorist and teacher as well as an architect.

The jury characterized Mayne as “a product of the turbulent ’60s, who has carried that rebellious attitude and fervent desire for change into his practice, the fruits of which are only now becoming visible in a group of large-scale projects.” These include the Caltrans District 7 Headquarters and the Science Education Resource Center/Science Center School, both completed in Los Angeles last year. Mayne has numerous other Southern California landmarks: the Diamond Ranch High School in Pomona (AIA Honor Award for Architecture, 2003), two Salick Medical Office buildings on Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles, and several distinctive private residences.

Mayne also is currently working on the Cahill Center for Astrophysics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. Nationally, Morphosis is completing three projects of major importance for the U.S. General Services Administration’s Design Excellence program, including a federal office building in San Francisco; the Wayne L. Morse United States Courthouse in Eugene, Ore.; and the NOAA Satellite Operation Control Facility in Suitland, Md.

The firm also is looking forward to completing the New Academic Building for The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and the NYC2012 Olympic Village, a project in association with the Big Apple’s bid for the 2012 Olympics. Morphosis also just won a commission to design the new Alaska State Capitol in Juneau.

Internationally, Morphosis has to its credit the Hypo Alpe-Adria Center in Klagenfurt, Austria (national AIA Honor Award for Architecture, 2003); ASE Design Center in Taipei, Taiwan; Sun Tower in Seoul, South Korea; and a social housing project slated for completion next year in Madrid, Spain.

Generalist and teacher
Today, Morphosis consists of 40 architects and designers, and Mayne is firmly committed to the practice of architecture as a collective enterprise. As he has said, “An architect operates, finally, more as a director does than as a painter or a sculptor. They have to focus the energy of a large group of people on a common obsession. The architect has to know a little bit about everything … it’s a generalist discipline not a discipline for the specialist.”

Throughout his career, Mayne has remained active in the academic world, and, “through lectures, writings, and his professorship at UCLA he has become a spokesman for architecture, a mentor and example to the younger generation of architects,” said the jury. He currently holds a tenured professorship at the University of California in Los Angeles, where he began teaching in 1993. Mayne also served on SCI-arc’s board of directors from 1972-1999. He has been a visiting professor and/or lecturer at institutions and universities around the world, which includes holding the Eliel Saarinen Chair at the Yale School of Architecture in 1991 and the Elliot Noyes Chair, Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 1988.

Among his many accolades are the Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome, the Brunner Prize in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the 2000 AIA Los Angeles Gold Medal.

Eighth American
In announcing the jury’s choice, Thomas J. Pritzker, president of The Hyatt Foundation, said, “When this prize was founded in 1979, Thom Mayne had just received his master of architecture degree from Harvard the year before. The intervening years have seen 28 Laureates chosen. Thom Mayne is the 29th, and only the eighth American to be so honored.” Mayne joins the late Philip Johnson, FAIA (1979); Kevin Roche, FAIA (1982); I.M. Pei, FAIA (1983); Richard Meier, FAIA (1984); the late Gordon Bunshaft, FAIA (1988); Frank O. Gehry, FAIA (1989); and Robert Venturi, FAIA (1991) in this honor.

Lord Palumbo, beginning his term as Pritzker jury chair, spoke of the jury’s choice: “Every now and then an architect appears on the international scene who teaches us to look at the art of architecture with fresh eyes, and whose work marks him out as a man apart in the originality and exuberance of its vocabulary, the richness and diversity of its palette, the risks undertaken with confidence and brio, the seamless fusion of art and technology.”

In his capacity as a Pritzker juror, 1999 AIA Gold Medalist Frank Gehry, FAIA, said, “I was thrilled that our new laureate hails from my part of the world. I’ve known him for a long time, watched him grow into a mature and, I like to say, ‘authentic’ architect. He continues to explore and search for new ways to make buildings useable and exciting.”

Prize awarded May 31
“[Mayne] has sought throughout his career to create an original architecture; one that is truly representative of the unique, somewhat rootless, culture of Southern California, especially the architecturally rich city of Los Angeles,” the jury said. “Like the Eameses, Neutra, Schindler, and Gehry before him, Thom Mayne is an authentic addition to the tradition of innovative, exciting architectural talent that flourishes on the West Coast.”

Mayne will receive a $100,000 grant and a bronze medallion at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion (named for the late founder of the award and designed by Gehry) in the Millennium Park in Chicago on May 31. The prize presentation ceremony moves to a different location around the world each year, paying homage to historic and contemporary architecture.

In closing his press interview after being notified of his award, Mayne concluded, “Architecture is a long-distance sport. You put your mind to it, and stay with it for 30 years, and then you’re just getting started.”

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