KAZUYO SEJIMA AND RYUE NISHIZAWA WIN 2010 PRITZKER PRIZE
The Associated Press reports that Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, a duo of Japanese architects praised for using everyday building materials to create ethereal structures that shelter flowing, dreamlike spaces, have won the 2010 Pritzker Architecture Prize.
Sejima, fifty-four, and Nishizawa, forty-four, join Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, and Renzo Piano in receiving the top honor in the field in recognition of the art museums, university buildings, and designer-label fashion boutiques they have designed in Japan, the United States, and Europe.
Among the projects mentioned by the Pritzker jury were the translucent-skinned Christian Dior Building in Tokyo’s upscale Omotesando shopping district and the Toledo Museum of Art’s see-through Glass Pavilion.
In their citation, the Pritzker jury also named the pair’s New Museum of Contemporary Art, a mid-rise stack of unevenly sized, white metal blocks that sit atop a transparent glass base on a scruffy street in New York’s lower east side. Nishizawa highlighted that project as embodying the duo’s ambition of creating buildings that are open for all to enjoy.
“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.”
Sejima, who had previously worked in the offices of acclaimed Japanese architect Toyo Ito, and Nishizawa formed their Tokyo-based design firm Sanaa Ltd. in 1995. The duo was awarded the 2005 Rolf Schock visual arts prize by Sweden’s royal academies in 2005.
Sejima is currently serving as the director of this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, the first woman to do so. The formal Pritzker ceremony will be held in May on Ellis Island. Sejima and Nishizawa will receive a $100,000 grant and a pair of bronze medallions. Sejima and Nishizawa are the fourth Pritzker laureates to be chosen from Japan after Kenzo Tange, Fumihiko Maki, and Tadao Ando.
