Pritzker for Thom Mayne.

In the 33 years since he co-founded Morphosis, Thom Mayne has progressed from restaurant interiors and modest residential additions to major commissions from the US government and the California Transportation Authority, school boards and international developers, without losing his sharp edge. There's never anything easy or ingratiating in the work of this maverick, but the ideas are now more likely to explode from the structures than from the man--who picked up an early client and rammed him against a wall to resolve a point of disagreement. Today, his passion is expressed diplomatically, around a table with high-powered clients, and--as a practitioner and a teacher--he takes infinite pains to resolve every issue. And yet, as Pritzker juror Karen Stein comments: 'Mayne sees architecture as a contact sport--a group activity that pushes physical limits, in this case of form making'.

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Mayne embodies the loose, experimental spirit of LA that nurtured Schindler, Lautner, and Gehry before him. All had to struggle for work and respect; none could have achieved as much anywhere else in America. Ironically, Gehry is now doing major work almost everywhere in the world but LA, whereas Mayne is beginning to enjoy wider recognition while continuing to realise important projects close to home. Few architects have enlarged their practice so rapidly from a narrow base. Recently completed buildings in southern California include the Diamond Ranch High School in Pomona (AR March 2001), Caltrans and the Science Center School in central LA, with an astrophysics centre at the California Institute of Technology still to come. Morphosis is completing an environmentally responsible federal office building in San Francisco, a courthouse in Oregon (p68), and a satellite control facility in Maryland. New commissions include the Olympic Village and Cooper Union addition in New York, and a new state capitol for Alaska.

In Europe and Asia, Morphosis has created buildings that have the same raw energy and dynamic power, notably the Hypo Alpe-Adria Bank complex in Klagenfurt, Austria. Mayne describes how it 'emerges from the ground as "reconfigured earth." Like the seismic shifting of tectonic plates, the bank headquarters erupts out of this pregnant, expectant form clad in sheet metal, declaring its status as a major cultural and civic institution and connecting the public forum with the street.' As the first American architect to win the Pritzker Prize in 14 years, Mayne is shaking things up at home and abroad, creating openings for other fearless architects.