Brazil's Mendes da Rocha wins 2006 Pritzker prize

Paulo Mendes da Rocha of Brazil is the 2006 winner of the $100,000Pritzker Architecture Prize, the world's most prestigious prize forarchitects.

The award, which will be formally presented May 30 in Istanbul,Turkey, is administered by the Chicago-based Hyatt Foundation onbehalf of the Windy City's billionaire Pritzker family.

Mendes da Rocha, 78, is the second Brazilian to receive the prize,following Oscar Niemeyer, the 1988 co-laureate. Mendes da Rocha isknown for his avant-garde designs for the Brazilian Sculpture Garden,the Forma Furniture Showroom and the renovation of the Pinacoteca doEstado museum, all in Sao Paulo. He also designed the Brazilianpavilion for Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan. Currently he's developing amaster plan for the Technological City, a project of the Universityof Vigo in northwestern Spain.

His designs, ethics-minded and informed by modernism, are knownfor their signature use of simple, often raw materials and "a deepunderstanding of the poetics of space," according to the prizecitation.