Reviewing the changes of architectural sensibilities within the scope of Pritzker architecture prize

Change is inevitable in the field of architecture due to social, cultural, environmental, technological, economic and politic global developments. The transformations ensued from these developments inherently have an impact on the discourse of architecture and this study aims to explore the changing intentions through the discourse of one of the most prestigious architectural award programs – the Pritzker Architecture Prize. The establishment of the Pritzker Prize in 1979 corresponds to the period of rising anti-modernist discourses and postmodern influences. The pluralistic character of this period affected the architectural mediums and productions in the world including the award programs and their evaluation criteria. The research begins with an overview of the emerging pluralist tendencies and paradigms/themes which shaped the theory of contemporary architecture, as reviewing the main architectural themes of the last forty years helps to establish a theoretical framework for the thesis study. After this review, the study is focused on mapping the website of the Pritzker, in order to reveal the reflections of these themes/concepts within the qualities of the laureates through a comprehensive discourse analysis of the jury citations, ceremony speeches and all kind of textual sources included in the content. Since, one of the main objectives of the study is to explore the potential of the website as an information source. The proposed method for mapping is developed by using the concepts and tools of digital humanities, which helps producing visual representations of the information (infographics) extracted from the website of the prize, considered as the main database of the study. During this visualization process, the aim is to explore the invisible information and make it visible with the application of computerized tools and digital techniques, which is finally defined as a new form of knowledge production. The infographics serve to understand the highlighted themes finding place in the discourse of Pritzker that is shaped by the international practices of prize-winners. Indeed, the thematic distributions over the laureates reflect the shifting sensibilities emphasized by the award program. Reconsidering the information obtained from the website and reinforced with some arguments from literature, it is seen that the Pritzker Architecture Prize, particularly in recent years, underlines the expanding role of the architect which pave the way for a more humanitarian architecture, sensible to the priorities and needs of the society. In this respect, the award program's stance is distinctive and supportive to environmental and local issues. Therefore, this thesis study intends to reshape the architectural sensibilities. Besides, developing a research method having its source in websites is expected to be a framework for architecture as well as for other disciplines.