Richard Meier

• Born October 12, 1934, age 81.• He is an American abstract artist and architect, whose

geometric designs make prominent use of the color white. A winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1984, some of his more iconic buildings include the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art and the Getty Center in LA.

• “White is the most wonderful color because within it you can see all the colors of the rainbow. The whiteness of white is never just white; it is almost always transformed by light and that which is changing; the sky, the clouds, the sun and the moon.”

~Richard Meier

Richard Meier

Richard Meier

• When I am asked what I believe in, I say that I believe in architecture. Architecture is the mother of the arts. I like to believe that architecture connects the present with the past and the tangible with the intangible.

~Richard MeierPritzker Award acceptance speech excerpt

Richard Meier

Getty Center•A Meier building is a sensuous experience before it is anything else. It is an exploration of solid and void and light and texture, and an essay on composition. Every Richard Meier building is visually compelling...they are deeply beautiful.

Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California

Richard Meier

• I believe that architecture has the power to inspire, to elevate the spirit, to feed both the mind and the body. It is for me the most public of the arts.

Renzo Piano

Renzo Piano

• Born 14 September 1937 Age 78

• He is an Italian architect and engineer, who won the Pritzker Prize in 1998.

• In 2006, Piano was selected by TIME as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

• In August 2013 he was appointed Senator for life in the Italian Senate by President Giorgio Napoliano.

2003/2008 Broad Contemporary Art Museum

(LACMA Expansion - Phase I)Los Angeles, U.S.A

2006/2010 The Resnick Pavilion (LACMA Expansion - Phase II)

Los Angeles, U.S.A

Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, France

Rem Koolhaas

Rem Koolhaas

• Born 17 November 1944) Age 71• He is a Dutch architect, architectural

theorist, urbanist and Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.

• In 2008, Time put him in their top 100 of The World’s Most Influential People.

Seattle Central Library, USA, designed by OMA

CCTV Headquarters in Beijing, China

Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid• Born 31 October 1950 is an Iraqi-British architect. She is 65 years old

• In 2004 she became the first woman recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize.

• She received the Stirling Prize in 2010 and 2011.

• In 2014 the Heydar Alivev Cultural Centre, designed by her, won the Design Museum Design of the Year Award, making her the first woman to win the top prize in that competition.

• In 2015 she became the first woman to be awarded the RIBA Gold Medal

• Her buildings are distinctively neofuturistic, characterized by the "powerful, curving forms of her elongated structures" with multiple perspective points and fragmented geometry to evoke the chaos of modern life". She is currently professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in Austria.

Zaha Hadid

Zaha participated in a competition and won which lead to the ‘Future Energy’ building. The theme of the EXPO was Future Energy which aims to raise awareness of energy resources, energy efficiency and environmental protection and seek innovative engineering and architectural solutions to these critical global issues.

Bergisel Ski Jump, Austria

Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright• Born Frank Lincoln Wright, June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959)

• He was an American architect, interior designer, writer, and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures, 532 of which were completed.

• Wright believed in designing structures that were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture.

• Frank Lloyd Wright was an architect for about 70 years.

• His work includes original and innovative examples of many building types, including offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, and museums. Wright also designed many of the interior elements of his buildings, such as the furniture and stained glass.

• Already well known during his lifetime, Wright was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as "the greatest American architect of all time“.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, New York

Michael Graves

Michael Graves• Michael Graves (July 9, 1934 – March 12, 2015) was an American

architect.• Graves was known first for his contemporary building designs

and some prominent public commissions that became iconic examples of Postmodern architecture.

• His recognition grew through designing domestic products sold by premium Italian housewares maker Alessi, and later low-cost new designs at stores such as Target and J.C. Penney in the United States.

• He was a representative of New Urbanism and New Classical Architecture and formerly designed postmodern buildings, and was recognized as a major influence in all three movements.

Walt Disney World Swan at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida

I.M. (Ieoh Ming) Pei

I.M. (Ieoh Ming) Pei

• Born April 26, 1917. He is 98.• He is commonly known as I. M. Pei, is a Chinese American

architect. • In the early 1980s, Pei was the focus of controversy when he

designed a glass-and-steel pyramid for the Musee Du Louvre in Paris.

• Awards in the field of architecture, including the AIA Gold Medal in 1979 and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in 2003.

• In 1983, he won the Pritzker Prize, sometimes called the Nobel Prize of architecture.

Bank of China Tower

Louvre PyramidCompleted in Paris in 1989

The construction of the pyramid triggered a considerable amount of controversy because many people felt that the futuristic edifice looked quite out of place in front of the Louvre Museum with its classical architecture.

Others lauded the juxtaposition of contrasting architectural styles as a successful merger of the old and the new, the classical and the ultra-modern.

Philip Johnson

Philip Johnson• Born on July 8, 1906, he died on January 25, 2005

• He is a retired UC Berkeley law professor and author who is considered the father of the intelligent design movement.

• He is a critic of what he calls "Darwinism". By "Darwinism", he means "fully naturalistic evolution, involving chance mechanisms and natural selection“ .

Private residence in New Canaan, Connecticut “The Glass House”

The Glass House

Rudolph M. Schindler

Rudolph M. Schindler• Born in 1887 Vienna - 1953 Los Angeles

• He was an Austrian-born American architect whose most important works were built in or near LA during the early to mid-twentieth century.

• He often is associated with the fringes of the modern movement in architecture.

• His inventive use of complex three-dimensional forms, warm materials, and striking colors, as well as his ability to work successfully within tight budgets, however, have placed him as one of the true Mavericks of early twentieth century architecture.

Schindler House Los Angeles, California

Frank Gehry

Frank Gehry

• Born February 28, 1929 (age 86) Toronto, Ontario, Canada

• A number of his buildings, including his private residence, have become world-renowned attractions.

• His works are cited as being among the most important works of contemporary architecture in the 2010 World Architecture Survey, which led Vanity Fair to label him as "the most important architect of our age"

• Gehry's best-known works include the titanium-clad Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles; Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris.

Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain

Walt Disney Concert Hall Built in 1999-2003