The international jury of the Frederick Kiesler Prize 2018 pays tribute to Yona Friedman as a “titan amongst architects, who is hugely respected by the established figures of the profession as well as those practitioners who are at the beginning of their careers. Throughout his working life of over six decades he has been uncompromising in rigor and visionary in his thinking. He has been enormously influential as a ‘feasible utopian’ architect, urban theorist, designer and teacher.
Friedman’s concepts for architecture are closely linked to the dynamics of social structures and to the changing necessities of the users therein. These topics which he emphasized from the beginning of his work gained even more importance in the present days with its actual developments of migration and a kind of new nomadism. It is also due to his own biography as a migrant that his ideas and his engagement for a deeply human architecture and society are based on existential experience and thus qualifies his work a political one too.” (Decision of the Jury, extract)
Friedman’s concepts for architecture are closely linked to the dynamics of social structures and to the changing necessities of the users therein. These topics which he emphasized from the beginning of his work gained even more importance in the present days with its actual developments of migration and a kind of new nomadism. It is also due to his own biography as a migrant that his ideas and his engagement for a deeply human architecture and society are based on existential experience and thus qualifies his work a political one too.” (Decision of the Jury, extract)
The Austrian Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts 2018 will be presented by Gernot Blümel, Federal Minister within the Federal Chancellery for the EU, Arts, Culture and Media. The exact date will be announced soon.
