The 2017 Pritzker Prize was awarded to RCR

This year's Hyatt Foundation award was won by a trio of architects from the RCR studio. Longtime friends Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem, and Ramon Vilalta returned to their hometown of Olot after studying at the ETSAV in Barcelona to establish their own studio there in 1988. While still in school, they focused more on landscape design, which is key to understanding RCR's projects conceived as a continuous landscape. This perception can also be applied to their smoothly evolving thirty-year career in the vicinity of the thirty-thousand-strong town hidden under the Pyrenees. Focused local work celebrates success at the highest level. For the first time in its thirty-nine-year history, the Hyatt Foundation award was given to three individuals at once. After Rafael Moneo, they are only the second Spanish architects to receive the award. The jury this year, chaired by Australian architect Glenn Murcutt, praised RCR’s work for “the art of placing buildings in the landscape and connecting place and time.” With each new project, they demonstrate that material unity gives incredible strength to their design, even while maintaining form simplicity. Glenn Murcutt adds: “The collaboration of these three architects results in uncompromising architecture with a poetic touch. A timeless work reflecting great respect for the past and at the same time sending a clear message to the future.” Currently, the RCR trio is working on projects in Spain, France, and Belgium. They presented themselves to the Czech audience two years ago at the House of Art in České Budějovice with the exhibition Intangible Material.
The Pritzker Prize, which comes with a reward of $100,000, will be awarded to this year's laureates at a ceremonial event on May 20, 2017, at the Akasaka Palace in Tokyo.

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