Peter pran biography

Born in Oslo on Oct. 19, 1935, Pran earned a B.Arch./Diploma Architect from Oslo Arkitekthögskole University in 1961 and a master of science in architecture.
Norweigan-born architect Peter Pran was a co-founder and partner of Peter Pran + H Architects in New York City and an influential educator.
Read about the life and work of the Architect Peter Christian Pran -- historical significance, biography, works designed, and related information.

•

Résumé

Pran had a long, varied and influential career, divided into four main periods: an early career in Chicago, IL, c. 1963-1982, a second phase practicing and teaching in New York, NY, 1982-1996, a 15-year tenure working in Seattle and through NBBJ's wordwide offices, 1996-2011, and, finally, a return to New York from 2011-2017. All of this time was bookended by childhood and late life in his native Oslo, Norway.

A term used frequently used to describe Pran was "relentless," suggesting his great energy and focus, perhaps verging on obsession. Only a relentless individual could have developed (and kept track of) such a broad and far-flung résumé.

Project Designer, Nils Holter, Architect, Oslo, Norway, 1961-1963. Holter was a well-known, and long-lived (born 03/22/1899-d. 08/30/1995) Norwegian architect, practicing in Oslo.

Project Designer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Architect, Chicago, IL, 1963-1966.

He worked for various firms in Chicago, IL, 1966-1969.

Senior Design Architect/Design Leader, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), Architects, Chicago, IL, 1973-1977.

Direc

•

Professor’s reputation as architect building

If Peter Pran lives a double life, he does it by design.

Pran is a full-time professor of architecture at Kansas University. But he’s also an internationally known architect receiving increasing publicity for his unusual buildings.

“The university comes first, but I do think me working on projects gives students an extra dimension on architecture,” he said. “I have a pulse on what’s happening. I can communicate that with students.”

Pran’s lifestyle requires frequent travel between KU, his firm NBBJ’s offices in New York, London, Seattle and Columbus, Ohio, and project sites around the world.

Last week, for example, he taught classes at KU on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On Tuesday and Thursday, he was in New York City, working on design projects.

Though he said that’s a busier-than-usual travel week, the 67-year-old architect said he had logged more than 100,000 airline miles each of the past five years.

“He’s an energetic guy, and he gets things done,”

•

A Norwegian-born architect, Peter Pran is Senior Vice President and Design Principal of Ellerbe Becket, a leading international architecture-engineering firm that combines a conscious commitment of creating "cutting-edge architecture" with the financial security of one of the largest practices in the States. Pran calls himself a New Modernist, rejecting historicism as "not recognizing our own time"; he worked with Mies van der Rohe on the Chicago Federal Center and the Berlin National Gallery. Pran's designs, with their curved surfaces and thin planes are characterized by a site-specific content and a poetic feeling of movement with its inherent sense of freedom. Using invited competitions as a way of exploring and exposing new ideas, Ellerbe Becket has won NYC/AIA Design Awards for six years in a row and five Progressive Architecture Awards in six years, producing schemes such as the groundbreading high-rise design for the Saudi Corporate Headquarters, Jeddah, Canadian National/Royal Trust Development, Toronto, Canada; and the Headquarters of Schibsted Gruppen Newspapers Aftenpos