Italian-born, British-raised architect Richard Rogers, whose designs include the famed Pompidou Centre in Paris, has won the 2007 Pritzker Prize, the architecture world's most distinguished honour.

"It's very nice to be awarded what is the most important architecture prize in the world," the 73-year-old architect said in an interview from his London office.

"Winning this prize will give me another platform to communicate one's social responsibility, also to the beauty of architecture and buildings."

In addition to praising Rogers for "an outlook as urbane and expansive as his upbringing," the prize jury's citation Wednesday paid homage to his commitment to city life and its ever-changing nature.

"In his writings, through his role as adviser to policy-making groups, as well as his large-scale planning work, Rogers is a champion of urban life and believes in the potential of the city to be a catalyst for social change."

For more than four decades, the Florence-born Rogers has advocated airy, urban, socially conscious, mixed-use designs.

Aside from the Pompidou Centre, Rogers has taken on a host of projects around the globe with his longtime firm, Richard Rogers Partnership.

June ceremony

The firm's designs have included the Nippon Television headquarters in Tokyo, the recently completed Terminal 4 at Barajas Airport in Madrid, a design for a mixed-use tower for the new World Trade Center in Manhattan, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, London's Millennium Dome and a host of other projects in the British capital.

Rogers will be celebrated at a ceremony in London June 4, when he will be presented a $100,000 US grant and the bronze Pritzker medallion

Founded in 1979 to annually honour a living architect's lifetime achievement and modelled after the Nobel Prize, the Pritzker Prize has grown to become the field's top honour. It is sponsored by the family behind the Hyatt Hotel chain.

Past winners include Canadian Frank Gehry, Chinese-American I.M. Pei, Rem Koolhaas from the Netherlands and Italian Renzo Piano, who co-designed the Pompidou with Rogers.

With files from the Associated Press