TOP DESIGN AWARD WON BY BOEHM

Architecture’s most coveted and lucrative annual prize, the Pritzker, has been awarded to Gottfried Boehm, well known in Europe but little known elsewhere for his individualistic designs.

A German architect living in Cologne, the 66-year-old Boehm is the second European in a row to win the prestigious $100,000 prize sponsored by the Hyatt Foundation. Last year’s winner was Hans Hollein of Austria.

The award to the relatively obscure Boehm is seen as a recognition that the challenge today of architecture is not so much in producing buildings that photograph well and can generate publicity for the designers but rather ones that work well within their environment.

Critics have noted Boehm’s concern for urban planning, citing his designs in the historic and central districts of Cologne, Berlin, Saarbruecken in West Germany and in Torino, Italy. “For Boehm, architecture and urban planning are inseparable,” wrote Hans Lumpp in a recent issue of the German design journal Bauen und Wohnen.

“I think the future of architecture does not lie so much in continuing to fill up the landscape, as in bringing back life and order to our cities and towns,” Boehm has declared.

Yet his buildings tend to be quite individualistic, often using modern materials such as glass, steel and molded concrete in a setting that might be dominated by medieval stone. What makes it seem to all come together is the exquisite detailing, a result no doubt of his Bauhaus training and his admiration for such modern masters as Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius.

According to the Pritzker announcement Thursday, Boehm’s designs are an effort to integrate “the old with the new, the world of ideas with the physical world, the interaction between the architecture of a single building with the urban environment, taking into account the form, material, and color of a building in its setting.”

In Boehm’s many and varied projects, which include town halls, churches, theaters, museums and public housing, “we sense, immediately, to our delight, that we are immersed in a vivid mingling of the present and past,” added New Yorker critic Brendan Gill, who serves as secretary to the award jury.

The jury this year consisted of J. Carter Brown of Washington, D.C.’s National Gallery of Art; Giovanni Agnelli, chairman of Fiat in Torino; Thomas Watson, chairman emeritus of IBM; and three architects, Ricardo Legorreta of Mexico, Fumihko Maki of Japan, and Kevin Roche of the United States.

The choice of Boehm came as a surprise. Speculation in architecture circles had centered around Charles Correa of India, Mario Botta of Switzerland, Ricardo Bofill of Spain and Americans Cesar Pelli and Robert Venturi. Pelli practiced in Los Angeles for a while, producing among many buildings the Pacific Design Center.

Boehm is a third-generation architect, who for years lived in the shadow of the towering talent of his father, Doiminikus, known principally for his expressive designs of churches.