Japanese architects win 2010 Pritzker Prize

courtesy SANAA

KAZUYO Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, partners in the architectural firm, SANAA, have been chosen as the 2010 Laureates of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. The Pritzker Prize, considered the highest honour in architecture, is regarded by many as equivalent to the Nobel Prize. Sejima and Nishizawa are the fourth Pritzker laureates to be chosen from Japan after Kenzo Tange, Fumihiko Maki and Tadao Ando.

 

courtesy SANAA

Sejima, 54, and Nishizawa, 44, were honored for work that included art museums, university buildings and designer-label fashion boutiques in Japan, the United States and Europe. "We want to make architecture that people like to use," said Sejima.

courtesy SANAA

While most of their work is in Japan, Sejima and Nishizawa have designed projects in Germany, England, Spain, France, the Netherlands and the US, under their combined name SANAA. The first SANAA project in the US began construction in 2004 in Ohio – a Glass Pavilion for the Toledo Museum of Art. Completed in 2006, it houses the museum’s vast collection of glass artworks, reflecting the city’s history when it was a major centre of glass production.

courtesy SANAA

"They explore like few others the phenomenal properties of continuous space, lightness, transparency and materiality," the jurors wrote. "They seek the essential qualities of architecture that result in a much-appreciated straightforwardness, economy of means and restraint." The jury also mentioned the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology's newly opened Rolex Learning Center, a single-story slab-like concrete and glass structure that undulates over a four acre site, punctured in places to let light enter the massive open space that makes up its interior.

courtesy SANAA

"We're always thinking, 'How we can open up the architecture to the people or to the surroundings that each project has?' This is one of the reasons why our architecture becomes open and transparent and light," Nishizawa said. "This is just to allow people to come in and to allow people to stay within the building as they like," he said. "The architecture is like a park."

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Pritzker Prize, Celebrating the Art of Architecture: 25 Years of Pritzker Prize Winning Architects