Christian de Portzamparc (born 1944) is a French architect and urbanist, born in Casablanca and trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1994, at the age of 50, he became the first French architect to win the Pritzker Prize. In the 1980s he developed the "open block", a new way of shaping city blocks that he has since used for a whole Paris neighbourhood, Quartier Masséna.
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The Cité de la musique in Paris (1995), one of President Mitterrand's Grands Projets, brings together a concert hall, a museum of musical instruments and a music library in the Parc de la Villette. The LVMH Tower in New York (1999) is the best-known of his prismatic towers. The Philharmonie Luxembourg (2005) is wrapped in 823 white steel columns set in three or four rows. One57 in New York (2014) was, for a few months, the city's tallest residential building. The Cidade das Artes in Rio de Janeiro (2013), with 1,780 seats, is South America's largest modern concert hall, though it cost about six times its budget. Christian de Portzamparc's projects are studied for the open block and for sculptural towers.
