Somewhat shy and inclined to be a bit of a loner, certainly a long way from the bright lights of the architectural star system, the latest winner of the Pritzker Prize is Glenn Marcus Murcutt (born in 1936), who in Australia – where he has always lived and where in 1969 he started his practice – has built mostly private houses but also a public centre and is finishing a 75 room eco-hotel. He usually carries out a handful of projects a year or as much as he can manage working entirely alone and as a result he has accumulated a long waiting list of around three years. The demand for his work is for its relationship with the environment and ecology “It’s about making the environment better – that, to me, is architecture”, he maintains.

So a change of direction for a major architectural award which over recent years has tended to favour the celebrities – usually big practices with effective PR – which crowd the journals. Instead this year honesty, elegance and a professional integrity is rewarded, in an architect who set out in the footsteps of Mies and who was defined by the jury as “an innovative architectural technician who is capable of turning his sensitivity to the environment and to locality into forthright, totally honest, non-showy works of art”.

Murcutt, the first Australian to be awarded the Pritzker prize will collect the award – which totals 100 000 dollars – in Rome in the Campidoglio on 29 May.