Chad Oppenheim named winner of the 2023 American Prize for Architecture

Oppenheim Architecture founding principal Chad Oppenheim has been announced as the 2023 American Prize for Architecture laureate by The Chicago Athenaeum and the European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies. 

Since 2000, the Miami-based Cornell University graduate has produced works on five continents that were lauded by Chicago Athenaeum president Christian Narkiewicz-Laine as being by turns equally “subtle, powerful, elegant, and deeply romantic.”

“[Chad] is a prolific American architect who is radical in his restraint, demonstrating his reverence for history and culture, as well as time and space, while honoring the preexisting built and natural environments, as he reimagines a more beautiful and poetic world with modern, meaningful buildings that relate to their context and reinvigorates the landscape and places in which his designs exits,” Narkiewicz-Laine continued.

Oppenheim’s contributions to the field have also garnered past recognition as one of ten winners of the 2018 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award. Significant projects include the Ayla Golf Academy and Clubhouse in Aqaba, Jordan, the Wadi Rum Desert Resort in Petra, and the Wharf Road Condominium in Surfer’s Paradise, Australia. Read more about Oppenheim and his practice in Archinect's 2020 Studio Snapshot interview.

In his closing remarks, Narkiewicz-Laine stated: “From the first moment I saw his work over a decade ago. I was immediately moved and overwhelmed by his immense and powerful philosophical awareness for an architecture that transcends the ordinary into the sublime, the ephemeral into the timeless, the commonplace into a significant work of art and, ultimately, a masterpiece. Such is the power of a real architect and an extraordinary visionary.”

The American Prize for Architecture (alternatively called The Louis H. Sullivan Award) was established in 1994 to honor the spirit of modernism and future direction of architectural design in the United States. Oppenheim joins a list of past recipients that includes the late Michael Graves, Eric Owen Moss, Kohn Pedersen Fox, and last year’s winners Angelica Trevino Baccon, John Cerone, Dana Getman, Gregg Pasquarelli, Coren Sharples, Christopher Sharples, and William Sharples of SHoP.

The Chicago Athenaeum shares that Oppenheim's recent work, along with 160 other winning projects from the 2023 American Architecture Awards, are to be published in ‘Global Design + Urbanism XXIII ("New American Architecture 2023”)’ edited by Narkiewicz- Laine for Metropolitan Arts Press Ltd.