Why is the Pritzker Architecture Prize called Pritzker?

The Pritzker is the most prestigious award in architecture. Each year, it is given to an architect or a practice. Over the decades, it has shaped the architectural pantheon of the 20th and 21st centuries: from Zaha Hadid to David Chipperfield, from Tadao Ando to Grafton Architects to Liu Jiakun, alongside historical figures such as James Stirling, Philip Johnson, Luis Barragán, and Aldo Rossi. Within the discipline, it has become a badge of honor, almost a metonymy: “…a Pritzker laureate like Renzo Piano designed…”.  Yet the name of this most coveted recognition is not some honorary dedication: it is a living, active name, the name of a family.

The Pritzkers arrived in the United States at the end of the 19th century and settled in Chicago. This timing is crucial, as it coincided with one of the most significant eras in architectural history, both for the city and the world: the years when the Chicago School flourished, with the work of Adler and Sullivan, true pioneers of international modernism and of its quintessential vertical expression, the skyscraper. The Pritzkers themselves underline this connection on the prize’s website, evoking Chicago as the homeland of Frank Lloyd Wright (and his Prairie Houses), as well as of Mies van der Rohe during his post-Bauhaus career. Two architects with almost opposite values, yet both fundamental to the birth of modern architecture. In this way, the family name became inseparable from the image of a city.

It is also tied to the world of hotels, through the Hyatt Hotels chain owned by the Pritzkers. Here, architecture takes center stage. In 1967, they acquired a true icon of American modernism: the Hyatt Regency in Atlanta, designed by John Portman, instantly recognizable for its futuristic design, especially its soaring atrium. Just over a decade later, in 1978, the idea was born to create a prize for contemporary architects. Beginning in 1979, Jay and Cindy Pritzker, supported by stellar juries, began awarding the Pritzker Architecture Prize: $100,000 to the laureate, along with a medal decorated with Sullivan’s drawings and Vitruvius’s words, “firmness, commodity, and delight.” The procedure and ceremony increasingly mirrored those of the Nobel Prizes, and the introduction of the medal reinforced this parallel. Until 1986, winners instead received a limited edition sculpture by Henry Moore.

The Pritzker Prize, then, tells the story of a family’s presence within a discipline, rooted in a city but expanding to a global scale. Just consider that J.B. Pritzker is currently the governor of Illinois, while Penny Pritzker served as Secretary of Commerce in the Obama administration. But their impact is not only political and cultural: the very form of the city bears their mark, most notably through episodes such as Frank O. Gehry’s sculptural Jay Pritzker Pavilion, inaugurated in 2004 as the centerpiece of Chicago’s Millennium Park, standing beside icons such as Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate.

Opening image: Frank Gehry's Jay Pritzker Pavilion. Photo anderm from Adobe Stock