This years Pritzker Prize winner, the highest recognition in architecture, is Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. This amazing architect is not the most well known name in his field, and he has remained in “relative obscurity” for most of his 30 year career. I am sure winning this high honor will shed some much deserved light on his projects which include mountain side chapels, and spas in and around the European countryside. One of Zumthor’s works that I find particularly intriguing is the Kolumba Art Museum in Cologne completed in 2007 which rises out of the ruins of the late gothic St. Kolumba Church, destroyed in World War II. The Pritzker jury called the project “a startling contemporary work, but also one that is completely at ease with its many layers of history.” Here is a look at some of Peter Zumthor’s architecture that won him the 2009 Pritzker Prize.
