“Unforgiving and tough.”
We visited one of the great architects of our time, David Chipperfield, who has had a strong personal connection to the Spanish region of Galicia for almost half his life.
“Clearly, having spent 30 years in this little fishing village, you see the sea not only as a physical thing but nearly as a cultural thing. The people here are shaped by their relationship to the sea.”
“We all tend to experience the sea on a nice day: ‘Now, it’s a nice day, let’s go to the sea.’ But if you live by the sea, you don’t have a choice about nice days or bad days. And if you’re fishing, you can’t just decide to go fishing on a nice day.”
David Chipperfield studied architecture at the Kingston School of Art and the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. He worked for Douglas Stephen, Richard Rogers, and Norman Foster before founding his own practice in 1985 and establishing a design methodology that is now used across five offices in London, Berlin, Milan, Shanghai, and Santiago de Compostela.
David Chipperfield is a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects and an honorary fellow of both the American Institute of Architects and the Bund Deutscher Architekten. Among the accolades he has received are the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, awarded in 2009, and a knighthood for services to architecture in the UK and Germany, awarded in 2010. He has received the RIBA Royal Gold Medal for Architecture (2011) and the Praemium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association (2013), both given in recognition of a lifetime’s work. David Chipperfield was appointed a member of the Order of the UK’s Companions of Honour in 2021, Commander of Spain’s Orden de Isabel la Católica, and member of Germany’s Orden Pour le Mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste in 2022 for his services to architecture internationally. In 2023, he was selected as Laureate for the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
In addition to design work, David Chipperfield has taught and lectured at schools of architecture worldwide. In 2012, he curated the 13th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale under the title Common Ground. He served as the mentor for architecture from 2016–17 for the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. In 2017, he founded Fundación RIA, a private, non-profit entity that works towards meaningful economic, environmental, and cultural development in Galicia, Spain. The team focuses on interdisciplinary studies, pilot projects, and strategic territorial planning, connecting global challenges to a specific context. It is rooted in close collaboration with Galicia’s communities, government, industry, and academic institutions and draws together international and local expertise. In June 2024, the foundation moved into its newly renovated premises in the center of Santiago de Compostela.
David Chipperfield has published numerous books and articles, including On Planning – A Thought Experiment (2018), a publication that explores and theorizes the urban qualities of contemporary urban developments. In 20202, he was the guest editor of the Italian design magazine Domus.
David Chipperfield was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner in Galicia in April 2024. This short video is part of a larger project in the making.
Camera: Rasmus Quistgaard
Edited by: Rasmus Quistgaard
Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner
Copyright: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2024
Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond, Ny Carlsbergfondet, and C.L. Davids Fond og Samling. This film is supported by Dreyersfond and Fritz Hansen.
#architecture
Subscribe to our channel for more videos on architecture: https://www.youtube.com/thelouisianachannel
FOLLOW US HERE:
Website: http://channel.louisiana.dk
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/louisianachannel
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LouisianaChannel
source
UCY2mhw-XNZSxrUynsI5K8Zw
