The prize-winners of the 4th Austrian Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts:

Asymptote / Hani Rashid + Lise Anne Couture

The jury, comprising Kurt W. Forster (Chairman), Olafur Eliasson, Marta Schreieck, Lars Spuybroek and Heimo Zobernig, explain their decision by the fact that, by creating spatial continuities, Asymptote have succeeded in forging a new symbiotic relationship between traditionally divided fields. Particularly emphasis is given to the “fluid access to a non-normative space and the innovative link-up of body and spatial experience”.

Lise Anne Couture and Hani Rashid devote their attention to perception research, taking the constant flow and change of spatial, but equally of socio-cultural, conditions into account. As such, Asymptote's ideas are also founded on a claim to changeability and adaptation – a strategy to which Kiesler also remained true in his universal world models.

The Austrian Frederick Kiesler Prize 2004 is presented by Vienna's City Councillor for Culture and Science, Andreas Mailath-Pokorny on September 11, 2004 on the terrace of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, Venice during the 50 Architecture Biennale.

Biography
Asymptote / Hani Rashid + Lise Anne Couture

Hani Rashid was born in Cairo, Egypt in 1958
Lise Anne Couture was born in Montreal, Canada in 1959
Hani Rashid received a Master's Degree in Architecture from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and is Professor of architecture at Columbia University in New York.

Lise Anne Couture received her Master of Architecture degree from Yale University in 1986. She has held numerous academic appointments including the Bishop Chair at Yale University and visiting professorships at Princeton University, Harvard University, and Columbia University.
In 1989 Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture founded a collaborative architecture and art practice in New York: Asymptote. The work of Asymptote has been widely exhibited internationally and the subject of numerous publications.

http://www.asymptote.net/