As was announced on Easter Monday, Swiss architect Peter Zumthor from Haldenstein will receive this year's Pritzker Architecture Prize, that will be handed over on May 29 in Buenos Aires. The three buildings, that the Jury singled out most, were the Thermal Baths in Vals, the Brother Klaus Chapel in Metternich-Wachendorf (close to Aachen) and the Kolumba Museum in Cologne. Quote Jury: "a startling contemporary work, but also one that is completely at ease with its many layers of history."

The last two were also chosen by the DAM Jury to be included within the "24 best" for this year's German Architecture Annual 2008/09, and Kolumba was awarded the "DAM Prize for Architecture in Germany 2008". At the award ceremony with lecture by Peter Zumthor at the DAM on January 16, 2009 the DAM Director, Peter Cachola Schmal, had foretold that Zumthor would soon have to receive the Pritzker Prize, as the time was ripe for such a decision, regarding especially the last two realized projects.

In the year before, the Pritzker Jury chose with French architect Jean Nouvel another current DAM Award winner, as Nouvel had received in November 2006 the International Highrise Award in Frankfurt's Paulskirche.