1998
Bordeaux, France
Rem Koolhaas
Pritzker Prize Laureate

Photo from the Pritzker Prize Page - Reprinted with permission

Previous Photo | Index | Next Photo

Time Magazine named Rem Koolhaas's Maison à Bordeaux "Best Design of 1998." The house was designed to accommodate a man who was confined to a wheel chair after an automobile accident. Koolhaas describes the building as three houses because it has three separate sections layered on top of one another.

The lowest part, Koolhaas says, is "a series of caverns carved out from the hill for the most intimate life of the family.”

The middle section is a smaller 3 x 3.5 meter (10 x 10.75 feet ) glass room where the wheelchair bound resident has his private living area. The entire room is an elevator platform which rises and lowers to other levels of the house. Bookshelves line one wall of the elevator shaft.

The upper level, which Koolhaas calls the “top house,” has separate areas for the husband and wife and for their children.