Pritzker Architecture Prize: Late Frei Otto honoured at 'Nobel Prize of architecture' event in Miami

German died just days before award was announced earlier this year

Otto Frei (Getty)

The worlds of architecture, fashion, politics and extraordinary wealth, came together in Miami to celebrate the late Frei Otto, a German who has been awarded what has been referred as the “Nobel Prize” of architecture.

Mr Otto was named as the winner of the 2015 Pritzker Architecture Prize earlier this year, just days before his death. On Friday evening, the international panel of judges celebrated his work, sitting alongside a tent based on a 1953 design by the architect.

Earlier this year, Tom Pritzker chairman of the the Hyatt Foundation, which sponsors the prize, said of the decision to award the prize to Mr Otto: “Our jury was clear that, in their view, Frei Otto’s career is a model for generations of architects and his influence will continue to be felt.”

Previous winners of the prize include Lord Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel, Richard Rogers and Glenn Murcutt, all of whom were in Miami for the private, black-tie gala where the award was formally announced.

US Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and Indian industrialist Ratan Tata, who are both also judges, also attended.

Mr Otto, who was 89, was best known for the roofs he designed for the main sports facility in the Munich Olympic Park for the 1972 summer games.

The Pritzker family is one of the wealthiest in the US and said to be worth an estimated $29bn, according to Forbes. Various members of the family spent much of the last decade involved in a feud, a row over inheritance claims that was eventually after years of legal actions and acrimony.