Richard Meier

Born in Newark, New Jersey, Richard Meier studied architecture at Cornell University, where he met the legendary Frank Lloyd Wright. Meier worked for the New York firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, and then for the celebrated modern architect Marcel Breuer before starting his own practice in 1963. Over the years he has won acclaim for his bold, original structures, often with the color white predominating. In 1984 he received the Pritzker Prize, the premier international honor for distinction in architecture. His major projects have included the city hall of The Hague, the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art and the Ara Pacis Museum in Rome, as well as large public buildings in Paris, Singapore, Basel, Prague and Tel Aviv. A crowning achievement of his career is the J. Paul Getty Center in Los Angeles. A dazzling white stone complex overlooking the city from high atop a mountain pass, it was completed in 1997. In this podcast, recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 1996 Summit in Sun Valley, Idaho, Meier recalls the youthful experiences that inspired him to become an architect, and the ideas that have informed his work.