Mayne Wins Pritzker
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Thomas Mayne was named yesterday as the winner of the Pritzker Prize, the field’s most prestigious honor. Mr. Mayne, 61, is the first American to win the Pritzker in 14 years and only the eighth to win in the 27-year history of the contest.
Mr. Mayne will be awarded a $100,000 grant and a bronze medallion on May 31 during a ceremony at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago’s Millennium Park. Past winners of the Prize, sponsored by the family that developed the Hyatt Hotel chain, include I.M. Pei, Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano, and Rem Koolhaas.
Fired from a teaching job at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, Mr. Mayne founded an alternative architecture school called SCIArc in 1972 with six colleagues and 40 students. That year, he started his firm Morphosis and two years later won his first award for designing a Pasadena school attended by his son.
In the mid-1990s, a series of convention-bending designs won Mayne his first major international praise. His commissions include a new academic building for The Cooper Union in New York, and New York’s 2012 Olympic Village.
