Christian De Portzamparc

Christian de Portzamparc (°Casablanca, Marokko, 5 May 1944) is a French architect and urbanist with an office in Paris. He won the Pritzker Prize in 1994.

He graduated from the École Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris. In 1966 he traveled to New York where he spent a few months during a nine-month academic hiatus that was rooted in his hesitations about continuing in architecture. Nevertheless he returned to his studies in the 1967 academic year and would graduate from the Beaux-Arts in 1970.

He created his agency in 1980, supported by Marie-Élisabeth Nicoleau, Étienne Pierrès and Bertrand Beau. Based in Paris, the agency has ‘satellite’ offices near building sites, in addition to offices in New York and Rio de Janeiro, and represents a team of 80 people.

Christian de Portzamparc focuses on all scales of construction, from simple buildings to urban re-think; the town is a founding principal of his work, developing in parallel and in crossover along three major lines: neighbourhood or city pieces, individual buildings and sky-scrapers.