Chipperfield Wins Stirling Prize

David Chipperfield Architects’ Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach am Neckar, Germany has won the RIBA Stirling Prize.

The museum brings together, for the first time since reunification, texts from a variety of German authors which had previously been dispersed in former East and West Germany.

The judges said: “This is a building that is simultaneously rich and restrained, a trick Chipperfield pulls off as well as any architect working today.

“The architect's control and discrimination in the choice of materials has by now become a signature but above all it is in the handling of the 'difficult whole' that the building excels.”

This is the first time a building designed by David Chipperfield has won the £20,000 Stirling prize.

RIBA president Sunand Prasad announced the winner at the Roundhouse in London on Saturday.The judges added:"This is a remarkably low-cost building in a high-cost country at just £2180 per square metre. The architects have made a merit of the need for economies. You can see that every penny spent has been carefully considered but that the right way to do things has always been chosen over the cheapest...."Since the end of the war Germany has been sensitive to matters concerning the neo-classical in architecture. Had it been submitted a decade or two earlier it would surely have been eliminated for its formal manner. It is encouraging that with time, more even handed attitudes have prevailed."

The Museum of Modern Literature beat off competition from five other contenders: America's Cup Building by David Chipperfield Architects, Casa da Musica by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture with Arup-AFA, Dresden Station redevelopment by Foster + Partners, the Savill Building by Glenn Howells Architects, and the Young Vic Theatre by Haworth Tompkins.