David Chipperfield | ScandinavianDesign.com

Sir David Chipperfield is a British architect and the 2023 laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. His practice, David Chipperfield Architects, is known for museums and cultural buildings marked by restraint, solid materials and respect for history. In Scandinavia he has worked for more than fifteen years with the Swedish lighting company Wästberg, and more recently with the rug maker Kasthall.

Background

Chipperfield was born in London in 1953 and grew up on a farm in Devon. He studied at Kingston School of Art and the Architectural Association in London, and worked for Douglas Stephen, Richard Rogers and Norman Foster. In 1985 he founded his own practice in London. It now also has offices in Berlin, Milan, Shanghai and Santiago de Compostela.

He was Professor of Architecture in Stuttgart from 1995 to 2001, curated the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2012, and became artistic director of the Italian furniture company Driade in 2014. He was knighted in 2010.

Architecture

His best-known work is the rebuilding of the Neues Museum on Berlin’s Museum Island, which reopened in 2009. It was followed by the James-Simon-Galerie next door, The Hepworth Wakefield, Museo Jumex in Mexico City, the extension of Kunsthaus Zürich and the restoration of Mies van der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie. In Sweden he created a pavilion with the sculptor Antony Gormley for Kivik Art Centre in 2008.

Lighting for Wästberg

The collaboration began in 2010 with the w102 chipperfield, an archetypal desk lamp with no visible joints that has since grown into a family. It continued with the w202 Halo pendant in opaline glass and the w222 Focal spotlight. The portable w241 Faro was inspired by a lighthouse and was named Lighting of the Year at Residence Stora Formpris 2024. For the Holocene series, to which John Pawson has also contributed, he designed Holocene No. 2 and the mirrored sconce Holocene No. 5.

Rugs for Kasthall

For Kasthall, Chipperfield drew on the brick buildings of the company’s factory in Kinna. Tegel is a collection of hand-tufted bouclé rugs. Fasad, designed with David Chipperfield Design, is presented by Kasthall as the world’s first rug collection in recycled post-consumer wool.