The announcement in early March that David Chipperfield had been named the 2023 Pritzker laureate sent a clear message: Architecture matters. While in service of broader societal goals, architecture remains committed to the formal, spatial, and material means through which it communicates. Spaces can inspire awe. Landmarks bring history to life, and carry that history into the future. To represent society in its broadest sense means to do so by translating it into architectural form.

In my conversation with Chipperfield, the 52nd Pritzker laureate calls for architects to embrace this sense of agency. “We can regain territory that we’ve lost,” he said. “We can regain it if we remind everybody that the principal concerns of architecture are to improve our environment and quality of life, and that we should use all our skills and tricks to do that.”