Australia’s only Pritzker Prize Laureate, Glenn Murcutt, will be the next chairman of the Pritzker Architecture Prize jury.

Current chairman, Lord Peter Palumbo, announced that Murcutt will succeed him, following his retirement, at the ceremony to honour the 2016 Pritzker Prize Laureate Alejandro Aravena, which was held at the UN Headquarters in New York on Monday 4 April.

“[Murcutt] is a brilliant architect, with a beautiful mind,” Palumbo said.

Tom Pritzker, chairman of the Hyatt Foundation which sponsors the prize, paid tribute to Palumbo’s 11 years of service as chairman of the Pritzker jury.

“To say that Peter has served ably is an understatement,” Pritzker said. “Like a duck gliding smoothly on top of the water, when needed, Peter was paddling like hell underneath the water.”

Murcutt was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2002 and became a jury member in 2010.