Church Dio Padre Misericordioso (Jubilee Church), Rome Church Dio Padre Misericordioso (Jubilee Church), Rome Church Dio Padre Misericordioso (Jubilee Church), Rome Church Dio Padre Misericordioso (Jubilee Church), Rome

About this talk

Running time: 20 minutes

Richard Meier studied at Cornell University, working for SOM and Marcel Breuer before setting up his own practice in 1963. His architecture, characterised by its whiteness, its preoccupation with the use of natural light and its debt to Le Corbusier, includes the Getty Centre in Los Angeles, the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art and the Atheneum in New Harmony, Indiana.

He has won a string of prizes including the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects, the Royal Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Pritzker Prize and the Praemium Imperiale.

In 1996, Meier beat off competition from, amongst others, Santiago Calatrava, Frank Gehry (see Counter Statements and Building Compound Shapes) and Tadao Ando to secure the commission for Jubilee Church, his first church project. Here he describes his first meeting with the Pope to present the project, how Jubilee, with its three monumental concrete sails, fits within and breaks free from, traditional church architecture and the challenge of relying on donations to fund construction.

You may also be interested to hear Meier discuss his thoughts on Modernism in Interplay Of Time & Space.

Richard Meier


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