The Pritzker Prize

Let's start by defining what the

Pritzker Prize is. It is an architecture
award that takes place annually and is
awarded by the Hyatt Foundation.
This award is also known to be the
equivalent of the Nobel Prize in
architecture.
The main purpose of this award is to
be able to honor an architect or
several, if applicable, if they work together. Their work should be a combination of
different skills such as vision, commitment and talent, the most important thing is
that they are reflected in their works. With them, buildings that are consistent and
also keep an important meaning for humanity and for the context that is made
through the art of architecture will be designed and brought to life.
As part of the general history behind the famous Pritzker Architecture Prize, it was
created in the year 1979, by the Hyatt Foundation, mentioned above. This award
was created thanks to Cindy and Jay A. Pritzker, founder of the Hyatt hotel chain,
which is why the award bears their name.
One of the main motivations they took into account to create it was to be able to
encourage and stimulate more people who love architecture. With this they
promise to inspire more professionals on the subject and this be able to encourage
them to achieve incredible and outstanding works with their creativity and hard
work.
Annual award winners will receive a $100,000 prize. They are also awarded a
bronze medal which is the symbolic part that formally accredits him as the winner.
Subsequently, a ceremony is held where the award is presented to him, where he
makes an acceptance and thanks speech.

Krakow Congress Center

This Congress Center was

designed by the Japanese
architect Arata Isosaki. He was
awarded in 2019 for the hard
work hidden in the architectural
work and the effort of 6 decades
of the architect's career.
This project is considered one of the most representative of the works of the
Japanese architect. His works stand out for being postmodernist and his designs
have always been in constant evolution.

The ideas and foundations of

Arata Isosaki have made his
works worthy representatives
of the culture of his country
and his own style. The
architect works with the idea
of ma. This is a word in
Japanese that refers to the
pause that exists between the
elements that surround it.
For the architect, architectural
objects such as ceilings,
openings or walls are not important. He highly values the space between each of
them. Assuring this, people will be in front of an architectural work where harmony
reigns in each built space. He also seeks to reconnect people with the sensitive
part of architecture, which makes his proposals increasingly interesting.
In this modern center, opened in 2014, they have venues for concerts, theater
shows, exhibitions, congresses, conferences and other prestigious cultural and
social events. The high standard of the building makes it one of the most elegant
and award-winning conference centers in Europe.
36,000 m² of conference space. All this in a strategic position in the center of
Krakow: these are some of the characteristics of the new ICE Congress Center,
designed to host fairs and conferences, but also classical and contemporary music
concerts or theater and dance performances. The modern and functional building
is the result of a collaboration between the Polish architectural studio Ingarden &
Ewy Architekci, ARUP (for the project of the technical and acoustic part of the
building) and the Japanese studio Arata Isozaki & Associates. Poltrona Frau
Contract has supplied all the seats for the auditorium and rooms.
ICE Krakow has three large rooms: the Auditorium, the Theater Room and the
Chamber Room (which have a capacity for 2,000, 600 and 300 people
respectively) and, additionally, a set of conference rooms. A pride of the center is
also the three-level lobby with glass exterior walls facing the Vistula and offering a
stupendous view of the Wawel Hill and the Skałka Church.
One of the InfoKraków municipal information points is located in the building.
 The design
strategy is based
on four key
considerations.
The first and most
important was the
decision to utilize
the panoramic resources of the site itself by placing a
multi-story foyer on the east side of the plot and by creating a space where viewers
would orbit along the curvatures of the balustrades. , liquid lines. of the lights, and
the fantastic stairs, admiring the panorama of the city center with the central
Wawel, and Kazimierz bristling with the towers of the church "Na Skałce" (in the
rock) and most of the church of St. Catherine . This hall forms a peculiar additional
auditorium for the public, but it is also a stage, a place from which to admire
Krakow and which, especially when illuminated at night, is perfectly visible from the
nearby Vistula and Wawel Hill embankments.
The second significant factor in working on the project was the creative use of
constraints, in particular the need to adjust the building's form to the geometry of
the corner frame arch, and recommendations from conservation services
establishing a limit on its height: 20 meters above the level of the nearby
Grunwaldzkie roundabout, with the option of exceeding the limit in places justified
by technological needs (for example, above the stages of the auditorium halls).
That had a powerful impact on the definition of the structure's form, including the
characteristic line of the roof.
The next, third group of decisions referred to the spatial
typology for the three main halls of the building:
respect the functions and the number of
spectators foreseen by the investor in each
one. These decisions were made in
collaboration with Arata Isozaki and his
Tokyo office, managed by Hiroshi Aoki,
together with the team of my Japanese
friends, together with whom we designed the Manggha
Museum in Krakow twenty years ago. For the main hall, with its
concert and congress functions, the shape of an incomplete "vineyard terrace"
was selected, since in this arrangement the auditorium encompasses the stage
from the sides, thus reducing the distance between the spectators and the scene.
building an intimate atmosphere despite a relatively large number of seats. The
second hall, with its theatrical performances, concerts and congresses, was
converted into a traditional stage with a mobile auditorium on the lower level. The
third room, a "studio" type room with a flat floor and flexible auditorium
arrangements, allows for division into two acoustically separate spaces.
The fourth pillar of the design was the definition of the façade and roof. The
aluminum roof, visible in its entirety from
the Wawel terrace, was formed in
cascades that flow into the Vistula, visually
diminishing the scale of the building from
the river side and the city center. The walls
of the building are a composition of glass,
ceramic and aluminum. To open the
building up to a view of the city, its eastern
side is glazed, while the sides and back of
the building are covered with a series of
ceramic tiles in colors corresponding to the color scheme applied to the interior,
with red as a reference to the color of the main room, graphite to the color of the
second room, white as the color of the lobby and silver aluminum used for the
ceiling finish. In the architect's conception, such a composition of multiple elements
and colors should reflect the movements and dynamics of the Dębniki district that
develops on the right bank of the Vistula and was only found within the Krakow city
limits in 1909. The size of the building, Therefore, is a proposed means to define
the scale of development in this part of the city, along Konopnickiej street, south of
the Congress Center.