Architect and writer Rem Koolhaas has been named the winner of the 2013 Johannes Vermeer Award, the Dutch state prize for the arts. The honor is bestowed each year to an artist working in the Netherlands. Unanimously selected by this year’s jury, Koolhaas will receive a $130,000 prize, to be used to realize a project.
Born in the Netherlands in 1944, Koolhaas is a professor of urban design and architecture at the graduate school of design at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. He was previously honored as the winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2000.
The Johannes Vermeer Award, established in 2008, seeks to recognize residents of the Netherlands working in a range of artistic disciplines that include dance, music, writing, fashion, design and painting. The past winners are opera director Pierre Audi (2009); filmmaker, artist and writer Alex van Warmerdam (2010); photographer Erwin Olaf (2011); and artist Marlene Dumas (2012).
Koolhaas will receive his award from the Dutch minister of culture, Jet Bussemaker, on Oct. 21 at the recently re-opened Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
PHOTO: Rem Koolhaas. Photo by Fred Ernst.
