Courtesy Pritzker Architecture Prize

Peter Zumthor

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Unlike recent winners of the Pritzker, such as Zaha Hadid, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, and last year's winner, Jean Nouvel, Zumthor is not a so-called “starchitect” whose name appears on the shortlist for just about every international architecture competition. Nor, according to the New York Times, is he a particularly prolific designer of buildings.

The 65-year-old would appear to be an unusual choice for the award, and he felt validated by the selection. “You can do your work, you do your thing, and it gets recognized,” he said.

Zumthor's best-known design is a spa at the Hotel Therme in Vals, in the Swiss Alps, which is made of slabs of quartzite meant to looks like stacks of Roman bricks. He is also known for his use of wood and for the sculptural quality of his work.

“In Zumthor’s skillful hands, like those of the consummate craftsman, materials from cedar shingles to sandblasted glass are used in a way that celebrates their own unique qualities, all in the service of an architecture of permanence,” said the citation from the nine-person Pritzker jury. “In paring down architecture to its barest yet most sumptuous essentials, he has reaffirmed architecture’s indispensable place in a fragile world.”

The architect is also known for a commission that never came to fruition. In 1993 he won a competition to build a museum on the horrors of Nazism that was to be set in former Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. Zumthor’s project, called the Topology of Terror, would have consisted of a three-story building whose frame was made of concrete rods. The building was partly built but then abandoned when the government cut funding for it.