Architect of Unyielding Designs Takes Top Prize

At the same time, he and his main partner in Morphosis, Michael Rotondi, were trying to get the firm off the ground. But work was hard to come by. Mayne and Rotondi, who left Morphosis in 1990, seemed destined for careers on architecture's experimental fringe. They had named their firm after a Greek word that means "taking shape," but for years virtually none of their designs actually were.

In 1977, Mayne enrolled in a one-year master's program at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. It was there that he began to mold his signature approach, mixing the progressive ideals of early Modernist architects with his admiration for defiant '60s-style activism.

After Mayne returned to L.A., Morphosis found some heartening local success in the 1980s. But the recession of the following decade hit the firm hard. The office, which had grown to 20 people, shrunk to about half a dozen.

Over the last several years, however, institutional and governmental clients have embraced Mayne. Morphosis won the San Francisco federal building and the Oregon courthouse jobs through the General Services Administration's design excellence program, which finds design firms for federal projects.

Last year, Morphosis landed its biggest commission yet, a residential development in New York that would serve as the Olympic Village for the 2012 Summer Games. Mayne hopes the $1.6-billion complex, designed to house as many as 18,000 people on a 61-acre waterfront site in Queens, will be built even if the city loses its Olympic bid. The firm now employs about 35 people.

"It's been a huge leap," Mayne said. "I'm finally doing the kind of work I always wanted and hoped to."

He will accept the Pritzker Prize, which includes a $100,000 cash award, at a May 31 ceremony at Millennium Park's Jay Pritzker Pavilion, an outdoor concert space in Chicago designed by Gehry. For Mayne, the location is fitting.

"Frank was almost exactly my age when he won the Pritzker," he said. "And he did with it exactly what you should do. Instead of settling into familiar projects, he tried to experiment even more, change things up and keep growing. I think it's a lovely model to follow."