Happy Birthday, Richard Meier!

Richard Meier turned 70 on October 12, 2004. The architect and designer was the youngest winner of the Pritzker Prize in 1984 – one of many awards he received over the course of his career.

Richard Meier was born in 1934 in Newark, New Jersey, USA. He studied at Cornell University in New York and worked, among others, for Marcel Breuer. Among his works are city halls, court buildings, corporate headquarters and private homes. Meier became famous, above all, with his museum designs. Meier also created numerous design and art objects for Alessi and Walter Knoll.

The color white is Richard Meier's trademark. In 1979, Meier used metal facades for the Bronx Development Center, which became famous as Meier's white architecture. His first work in Europe was the Museum für Angewandte Kunst (Museum for Applied Art) in Frankfurt in 1984. That same year, Richard Meier received the Pritzker Prize for architecture. The design for the Getty Center in Los Angeles – the largest order ever given to a single architect – followed suit. Meier names, among others, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright as his influences and sources of inspiration. In his opinion, tradition is important, whether you follow it or break with it: architecture is a continuum to which you are connected. In his career, Meier was always occupied with and interested in the special relationship between space and form. "What is most important, however, is light. Light is life."

www.richardmeier.com