Wolf D. Prix, born in Vienna in 1942, a co-founder, Design Principal and CEO 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. After various international teaching assignments he became professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in 1993 where he directed the Studio Prix and served as Dean of the Institute for Architecture and as Vice-Rector of the University until October 2011. He still remains Dean 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 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. In 2011 he was honored with the Honorary Citizenship of the City of Busan, Southkorea.
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), Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus (2009) and COOP HIMMELB(L)AU: Architecture is the Media and the Media is the Message at the Busan Design Center in Busan, Southkorea (2011).
Among the recent projects are the Busan Cinema Center in Busan, South Korea; the Musée des Confluences in Lyon, France; the House of Music in Aalborg, Denmark; the European Central Bank’s new headquarters in Frankfurt am Main, Germany; the Dalian International Conference Center in Dalian, China; the Museum of Contemporary Art & Planning Exhibition in Shenzhen, China; the Central Bank of Azerbaijan, Baku as well as the Martin Luther Church in Hainburg, Austria.
The work of Wolf D. Prix has been published in numerous books such as Get Off of My Cloud (Hatje Cantz, 2005), Dynamic Forces. BMW Welt (Prestel, 2007), HS#9 (Prestel, 2010), Pavillon 21 MINI Opera Space (Himmelprint, 2010), himmelblau no es ningún color (Editorial Gustavo Gili, 2010), COOP HIMMELB(L)AU Complete Works 1968-2010 (TASCHEN, 2010) and I Maestri dell’Architettura Coop Himmelb(l)au (Hachette Fascicoli, 2011).
