Two more cultural figures who received this prestigious award were the British sculptor Anthony Gormley and Michelangelo Pistoletto, an Italian artist - a leading representative of the arte povera movement. Each of the five laureates will receive a prize of 15 million yen (113 thousand euros).
In motivating the awarding of David Chipperfield, the jury of the Japan Arts Association prize highlighted the connection between his work and Japan and its traditions. After graduating from the London School of the Architectural Association and working in the workshops of Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, in the 1980s he was in demand in this very country, where there was no such dictatorship of postmodernism as in Britain.
Chipperfield's thoughtful and contextual neo-modernism was clearly influenced by masters such as Tadao Ando and traditional Japanese architecture. The British architect still maintains creative ties with this country, but European buildings brought him wide fame, first of all - the reconstruction of the New Museum in Berlin (2009).
However, David Chipperfield also successfully operates in other regions: among his recent works is the project of the Museum of Photography and Visual Arts (MMPVA) in Morocco. It will be erected in Marrakech, next to the 12th-century Menard Gardens, so the architect's attention to the context is especially important. With an area of over 6,000 m2, it will become the largest photography museum in the world. The institution itself, MMPVA, is very young: it was founded in January 2013.
