Frei Otto was born in Siegmar, Germany, on May 31, 1925, and grew up in Berlin. “Frei” in German means “free”; his mother thought of the name after attending a lecture on freedom. Otto’s father and ...

Shigeru Ban was born in Tokyo on August 5, 1957. His father was a businessman at Toyota, and his mother is a women’s clothing “haute couture” designer. Ban’s father was very fond of classical music ...

Eduardo Souto de Moura was born in Porto, Portugal in 1952. His father was a doctor (ophthalmologist) and his mother a home maker. He has one brother and one sister. The sister is also a doctor and ...

Oscar Niemeyer (1907-2012) was born in the hillside district of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts there. Niemeyer’s architecture, conceived as lyrical sculpture, expands ...

Luis Barragán (1902-1988) was born in Guadalajara, Mexico. His professional training was in engineering, resulting in a degree at the age of twenty-three. His architectural skills were self-taught. In ...

Born in Rotterdam, Rem Koolhaas spent four years of his youth in Indonesia, where his father served as director of a newly formed cultural institute. Following in the footsteps of his literary father, ...

José Rafael Moneo was born in the small town of Tudela, Navarra, Spain in May of 1937. His mother, Teresa, was the daughter of a magistrate from Aragón. His father, Rafael, whose family roots were in ...

Tadao Ando of Osaka, Japan is a man who is at the pinnacle of success in his own country. In the last few years, he has emerged as a cultural force in the world as well. In 1995, the Pritzker ...

Mendes da Rocha (1928–2021) began his career in São Paulo, Brazil, in the 1950s as a member of the “Paulist brutalist” avant-garde. He received a degree in architecture in 1954, opened his office in ...

Aldo Rossi (1931-1997) has achieved distinction as a theorist, author, artist, teacher and architect, in his native Italy as well as internationally. Noted critic and historian, Vincent Scully, has ...

Architect and Professor Wang Shu was born in 1963 in Urumqi, a city in Xinjiang, the western most province of China. He received his first degree in architecture in 1985 and his Masters degree in 1988 ...

Toyo Ito was born on June 1, 1941 in Keijo (Seoul), Korea (Japanese). His father was a business man with a special interest in the early ceramic ware of the Yi Dynasty of Korea and Japanese style ...