When reading about the information on the announcement of the Pritzker 2021 prize, I wanted to write a little about this award. Pritzker is the most prestigious award for architects, who have been awarded to many architects with admirable designs and inspiring future generations of architects. I have visited many works of architects who have been awarded the Pritzker or had the opportunity to work with a design team of Arata Isozaki & Associates on a project in Saigon - these opportunities have brought me valuable experience in current design work.
Among the famous architects who have won the award with many magnificent works, I particularly pay attention to GLENN MURCUTT, an Australian architect who won the prize in 2002, before Thom Mayen, Zaha Hadid, or Jean Nouvel. Information about Glenn Murcutt is not widely covered like Tadao Ando, Frank Gehry, or Renzo Piano because the first special thing is that all of his works were completed in Australia and not on a large scale. After graduating in Architecture from Sydney Technical College in 1961, he spent nearly 8 years working with a number of Australian architects before opening his own office in 1969. During that time, Glenn Murcutt approached the basic philosophy of architecture design closely combined with nature.
Glenn Murcutt's works, mainly houses, community projects, and religion, are not grandiose but mostly very simple but still modern and true to both literal and figurative meanings of "sustainability." This means that Murcutt's works are carefully studied to combine with the surrounding natural environment into a unified whole, enhancing the beauty of both instead of making architecture separate from landscape or landscape overwhelming architecture. His designs are truly for the benefit of users, creating comfortable spaces and regenerating energy for users instead of requiring them to spend a lot of time and effort to take care of them. Murcutt chooses materials in his designs based on the criteria that the material will cause the least energy loss during construction and operation, so his works can adapt to all weather conditions. To understand more about Glenn Murcutt's "Touching the Earth Lightly" design philosophy, it is necessary to study his works, such as the Simpson-Lee House, Bowali Visitor Information Center, Marie Short Farm House, Riversdale Boyd Education Centre, and the Australian Islamic Centre.
One of the unique aspects of Glenn Murcutt is that he is an independent architect who works alone without staff or assistants. This means that he can devote all of his creative abilities to each project. He has positioned himself in direct opposition to many other renowned architects, such as the Pritzker Prize juror J. Carter Brown and "starchitects" with multinational design firms and hundreds of employees. It is clear that the direct involvement of architects such as Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid (before her death), or Bjarke Ingels in new projects is becoming increasingly rare as they have assistants ready to continue their design language.
This inspires many other independent architects, like myself, to continue pursuing our passion for the profession. Previously, I always thought and tried to maintain a design firm large enough with many employees to achieve success on large-scale projects. However, I got caught up in management tasks and was less involved in projects using my expertise. Therefore, now that I can design directly, I feel happy (thanks to my lovely wife Yen who always encourages me to pursue my passion).
Through the works of Glenn Murcutt, I can confidently affirm my perspective in architectural design, which is that an architect's mark should be on the projects they design. These projects do not necessarily have to consider scale, whether large or small, with high or low investment value, but rather the most functional and appropriate for the surrounding environment, and truly sustainable. Even after 50-100 years, when looking back, they should not lose their original design philosophy. I often exchange ideas with colleagues in the company that architects are different from painters or sculptors because if they create a bad artwork, it may only affect them or a few others or can be immediately replaced with another artwork in an exhibition. But when architects create a bad project, it affects the entire community, which cannot be quickly and easily replaced. Therefore, the architectural profession is indeed a profession with a lot of pressure... but...
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