Joshua Prince-Ramus is Principal of REX. In addition to the Vakko Fashion Center and Power Media Center in Istanbul, Turkey, REX recently completed the AT&T Performing Arts Center’s Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre in Dallas, Texas. Current work includes Museum Plaza, a 62-story mixed-use skyscraper housing a contemporary art center in Louisville, Kentucky; the new Central Library and Music Conservatory for the city of Kortrijk, Belgium; and a 2,643,000 sf luxury residential development in Songdo Landmark City, South Korea. Notably, within the past year REX received second prize in both the international competition for the new Edvard Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway, and the Finnish Innovation Fund’s Low2No sustainable development competition in Helsinki, Finland.
Prince-Ramus was the founding partner of OMA New York—the American affiliate of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in the Netherlands—and served as its Principal until he renamed the firm REX in 2006. While REX was still known as OMA New York, Prince-Ramus was Partner in Charge of the Guggenheim-Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas and the Seattle Central Library, hailed as Time magazine’s 2004 Building of the Year and by Herbert Muschamp in the New York Times as “the most exciting new building it has been my honor to review in more than 30 years of writing about architecture.” In 2005, the Seattle Central Library was awarded the top honors bestowed by the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC), the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and the American Library Association (ALA).
Prince-Ramus was recently described as the “savior of American architecture” by Esquire magazine. Additionally, he was identified as one of “The 20 Essential Young Architects” by ICON magazine, as one of the world’s most influential young architects by Wallpaper* and as one of the twenty most influential players in design by Fast Company. Prince-Ramus is a member of the TED Brain Trust—along with thinkers such as Bill Gates, Craig Venter, Dean Kamen, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin— and was a speaker at the TED2006 and TEDxSMU conferences. Videos of Prince-Ramus’ TEDTalks, in which he describes the designs of the Seattle Central Library, the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre, and Museum Plaza, can be found at “www.ted.com.”
Prince-Ramus received a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy with distinction from Yale University in 1991 and a Master of Architecture from Harvard University in 1996, where he was both an SOM fellow and the first Araldo Cossutta Fellow. He was the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Architecture in Fall, 2007; a visiting professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design in Spring, 2009; and a visiting professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation in Fall, 2009. Prince-Ramus is an NCARB-certified architect, and holds licenses in Kentucky, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, and the Netherlands.
