The 2011 Pritzker Architecture Prize goes to Eduardo Souto de Moura, a Portuguese architect who blends modernism with tradition and history. Souto de Moura, 58, has built mostly in his home country and was previously not well-known in the United States.
Souto de Moura is known for incorporating local history, context and landscape into his work. The jury praised his buildings for having "a unique ability to convey seemingly conflicting characteristics — power and modesty, bravado and subtlety, bold public authority and sense of intimacy — at the same time."
In Western Europe he has designed everything from homes to museums to a stadium in Braga, Portugal. One side of the stadium ends at a mountain — the architect had the rock dynamited with artistic precision, blending the crushed granite into the stadium's concrete. The Pritzker jury described the stadium as "muscular, monumental and very much at home within its powerful landscape."
The Pritzker Prize — often called "Architecture's Nobel" — was expected to be announced in early April, but a Spanish newspaper leaked the news on Monday.
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