Under Consideration for a Pritzker Prize

The Pritzker Architecture Prize is an international award widely regarded as that profession’s most prestigious honor. It is awarded annually to recognize "a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture."

Since its creation in 1979, the Pritzker Architecture Prize has been awarded to thirty-one individuals. Of those, at least twenty-two have designed buildings with significant portions below ground level. Some are truly underground, in that they are covered with earth; others are buildings that are partially submerged to reduce their apparent size. The following list presents at least one example for each of those twenty-two distinguished architects.

Philip Johnson (1979). Designed and built an underground art gallery at his home estate in New Canaan, Connecticut.

Kevin Roche (1982). Designed the completely underground Winthrop Rockefeller Archaeology Museum and the largely underground Oakland Museum of California and DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Gallery.

I. M. Pei (1983). Designed the underground expansion of the Louvre in Paris. His Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Ohio, and his addition to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, have significant underground portions

Richard Meier (1984). Designed the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California; neighbors of the center requested that it not be taller than two stories, so Meier designed approximately half of the one-million-square-foot complex to be underground.

Hans Hollein (1985). Designed the Vulcania theme park and research institute in France; like the interior of a natural volcano, most of the building is enclosed within the earth.

Gordon Bunshaft (1988). Designed the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University with underground book stacks, offices, and reading rooms.

Oscar Niemeyer (1988). Designed the major buildings for Brasilia, Brazil. Many have underground components; perhaps most notable is a circular cathedral that is nearly all below ground level.

Frank O. Gehry (1989). Designed the Pariser Platz 3 mixed-use building in Berlin, Germany; its underground casino level is partially visible through a glass floor in the main atrium. Also designed the Le Clos Jordan Winery in Canada with both above- and below-ground production and tour facilities. Commissioned in 2006 to design a below-lawn addition to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Alvaro Siza (1992). Designed the Baixa/Chiado station for Lisbon’s underground transportation system.

Fumihiko Maki (1993). Designed the new (1982) library building for Japan’s Keio University; five of its eleven stories are underground.

Tadao Ando (1995). Frequently incorporates subterranean spaces in his designs. Notable examples include the Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum in Japan, and an addition to the Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts.

Rafael Moneo (1996). Designed an expansion of the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain, including an underground auditorium and subterranean passages connecting historic surface buildings.

Sverre Fehn (1997). Designed the Ivar Aasen Centre in Orstad, Norway. In keeping with Scandinavian tradition, the building is partially recessed into the earth.

Renzo Piano (1998). Designed a largely underground expansion of the Morgan Library in New York that was completed in April 2006. Also designed a new building for the Art Institute of Chicago with two of its five stories recessed into the ground.

Sir Norman Foster (1999). "The subterranean or partially buried building has been a consistent theme in the practice’s work," declares the Foster and Partners’ web site. Notable examples in England include the Crescent Wing addition to the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, the Canary Wharf station on the London Underground’s Jubilee Line Extension, and an underground visitor and education center for the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, England.

Rem Koolhaas (2000). Designed the Guggenheim Las Vegas museum; a section of the floor of its main gallery could be retracted to reveal a lower-level gallery. Also designed two  Souterrain subway stations in the Hague, Netherlands.

Jacques Herzog & Pierre de Meuron (2001). Cooperatively designed a hybrid residence and media art exhibition facility in California. The architects say its underground exhibition space "is barely perceptible from outside; it intentionally eludes the eye of the beholder; it denies its physical existence. It is a black box that is brought to life only through the illuminated projections of the artists."

Jørn Utzon (2003). Designed a subsurface entrance for his Sydney Opera House. Also designed a mostly underground addition for the Silkeborg Museum of Fine Arts in Denmark. Describing the design, which was never built, he wrote, "It will be with a sense of surprise and a desire to penetrate down into the building that the visitor for the first time sees the three-storeyed building open beneath him."

Zaha Hadid (2004). Designed a headquarters building for the EuskoTren, a regional public transit authority in Spain, including an underground leisure and commercial center. Also designed for the American University of Beirut an international affairs building with an underground auditorium. Her Land Formation One exhibition pavilion in Weil am Rhein, Germany, was described by one architecture critic as "hardly distinguishable from the ground from which it emerged and into which it returned.

Thom Mayne (2005). His earth-integrated building designs include the NOAA Satellite Operation Control Center in Suitland, Maryland, the Yuzen Vintage Car Museum in Los Angeles, the Science Center School in Los Angeles, and Diamond Ranch High School in Pomona, California.

Paulo Mendes da Rocha (2006). Designed the Brazilian Museum of Sculpture in São Paulo, Brazil. In the Pritzker Prize booklet highlighting his works, the museum is described this way: "Instead of creating a free-standing building resting on the site, the museum and landscape are treated as a whole. Large slabs create partly underground internal spaces...."

Sir Richard Rogers (2007). In addition to some projects involving subway stations, Sir Rogers designed the Bodegas Protos Winery in Spain. He says, "its volume is mainly buried underground."