Rafael Moneo receives the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement of the Biennale Architettura 2021

José Rafael Moneo Vallés (born May 9. Tudela, Navarra,1937) is a Spanish architect. He was won the Pritzker Prize for architecture in 1996. He studied at the ETSAM, Technical University of Madrid (UPM) from which he received his architectural degree in 1961. From 1958 to 1961 he worked with the architect Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oiza in Madrid and from 1961-62 in Hellebaeck, Denmark with Jørn Utzon. In 1963 he was awarded a fellowship at the Spanish Academy in Rome. Upon his return to Spain in 1965, he opened his office in Madrid and began teaching at the Escuela Técnica Superior of Madrid.

In 1970 he won a teaching chair in architectural theory at the Escuela Técnica Superior of Barcelona. From 1980 to 1985 he was chaired professor of composition at the Escuela Técnica Superior of Madrid. He has taught architecture at various locations around the world and from 1985 to 1990 was the chairman of Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he is the first Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture. In 1991 he was named Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design where he continues to lecture as Professor Emeritus. He became Academic Numerary in the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid in May 1997.

Spanish constructions of his design include the renovation of the Villahermosa Palace (Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum) in Madrid, the National Museum of Roman Art in Mérida, an expansion of the Madrid Atocha railway station, the Diestre Factory in Zaragoza, Pilar and Joan Miró Foundation in Majorca the headquarters of the Bankinter (again, in Madrid), Town Hall in Logroño. He also designed the annex to the Murcia Town Hall, which was completed in 1998. His latest works are the enlargement of the Prado Museum, the extension of the Bank of Spain, an almost totally mimetic reproduction of the existing building and the extension of the Madrid Atocha railway station 2011.

Some of Moneo's prominent works in the US include the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, the Davis Art Museum at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and the Audrey Jones Beck Building (an expansion of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston). Moneo also designed the Chace Center, a new building for the Rhode Island School of Design. Moneo's most recent work is the Northwest Corner Building (formerly the Interdepartmental Science Building) at Columbia University in New York City, which first opened in December 2010.

Moneo is in possession of prestigious international awards including the Prize of architecture Arnold W. Brunner Memorial (1993) of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Schock Prize in Visual Arts (1993) in Stockholm, the Pritzker Prize (1996), the Antonio Feltrinelli (1998) of the National Academy of Lincei in Rome and Mies van der Rohe (2001) of Barcelona.

Biography Dates