Ryue Nishizawa and Kazuyo Sejima Photo by Takashi Okamoto, Courtesy of Sanaa.
The Rolex Learning Center, Ecole Polytechnique Federale Lausanne, Switzerland. Photos by Hisao Suzuki, Courtesy of Sanaa
Floor Plan Rolex Learning Center, Courtesy of 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 formal ceremony for what has come to be known throughout the world as architecture’s highest honor will be held on May 17 on historic Ellis Island in New York.
The purpose of the Pritzker Architecture Prize is to honor annually a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.
New Museum of Contemporary Art New York City, New York Photos by Hisao Suzuki, Courtesy of Sanaa
“They explore like few others the phenomenal properties of continuous space, lightness, transparency and materiality to create a subtle synthesis,” the jury citation said. “Sejima and Nishizawa’s architecture stands in direct contrast with the bombastic and rhetorical. Instead, they seek the essential qualities of architecture that result in a much appreciated straightforwardness, economy of means and restraint in their work.”
“All in all a building is the equivalent of a diagram in space used to describe in abstract form the daily activities that take place within it” is one of the avantgarde concept from Studio Sanaa.
Some of their most notable works are the The Rolex Learning Center Ecole Polytechnique Federale Lausanne in Switzerland, the New Museum of Contemporary Art New York City in New York, the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art Kanazawa in Ishikawa Japan and the Dior Building in Tokyo’s Omotesando district.
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan Photo by Sanaa
Christian Dior Building Omotesando Tokyo, Japan Photos by Hisao Suzuki
Photos: Sanaa,Takashi Okamoto,Hisao Suzuki, | Pritzker Architecture Prize