He almost failed architecture school. Now he’s netted the profession’s top prize, the Pritzker. Britain’s modernist master talks about the building that changed everything – and running a bar in Spain
Sometimes, it takes a trip abroad to make you realise what you have at home. When David Cameron visited German chancellor Angela Merkel in 2013, she introduced the then British PM to “one of our most famous German architects”. The designer in question? The London-born and -based Sir David Chipperfield, who had built several museums in Germany, as well as law courts in Barcelona and a library in Des Moines, Iowa, all while being relatively overlooked in his native Britain.
Ten years on, Chipperfield has just been announced as the winner of the 2023 Pritzker prize, architecture’s highest international accolade. And he has become a bit better known back home. “It’s a great honour,” he says, speaking from his second home in Galicia, northwest Spain, where he spent much of the pandemic. “And also a slight relief.”
