Wolf Prix

Wolf D. Prix, born in Vienna in 1942, is a cofounder of COOP HIMMELB(L)AU. He studied architecture at the Vienna University of Technology, the Architectural Association of London, and the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles. He became professor of the University of Applied Arts Vienna in 1993 where he now serves as vice-rector and head of the Institute for Architecture.

Wolf D. Prix received numerous awards including the Great Austrian State Award, the nomination Officier de l’ordre des arts et des letters, the Gold Medal for merits to the federal state of Vienna, the RIBA Annie Spink Award for Excellence in Architectural Education, RIBA Jencks Award as well as the Austrian Decoration of Honor for Science and Art amongst others. Since 2001 he has been a Doctor Honoris Causa de la Universidad de Palermo, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

As Design Principal of COOP HIMMELB(L)AU his architectural designs have been featured in many museums and collections worldwide including the solo retrospectives Construire le Ciel at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, France (1992), the exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture at MoMA (1988), New York or COOP HIMMELB(L)AU: Beyond the Blue at the Museum of Applied Arts/ Contemporary Art, Vienna (2007) and Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus (2009). The work of Wolf D. Prix has been published in numerous books such as Get Off of My Cloud (Hatje Cantz, 2005) or Dynamic Forces. BMW Welt (Prestel, 2007).

Photo credit: Elfie Semotan