Architecture and Design Network

The Architecture and Design Network welcomed a prestigious guest Tuesday night at the Arkansas Arts Center, and a fairly good crowd gathered to greet her. Martha Thorne, lately of Madrid, is the executive director of perhaps architecture’s most prestigious lifetime award, the Pritzker Prize. Thorne gave a presentation in which she explained the history of the award, a brief survey of its winners and a breakdown of where they hail from, and a polite polemic on the phenomenon of “starchitecture,” or the celebration of an architect at the expense of the longer lasting (and often more accessible) work itself. “Why are we looking at people more than we’re looking at buildings?” she asked.