Pritzker Prize Winners 2010: Sanaa Architecture

The Pritzker foundation announced the winners of its coveted annual prize on Sunday: Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of Sanaa. They're the first male/female team and the third Japanese firm to win the prize.

The subtlety of their work stands out from previous "starchitect" winners like Frank Gehry (1989) and Zaha Hadid (2004). Jury chairman Lord Palumbo said that the duo won "for architecture that is simultaneously delicate and powerful, precise and fluid, ingenious but not overly or overtly clever," and for "buildings that successfully interact with their contexts and the activities they contain."

Although most of their work is located in Japan, recent U.S. projects such as the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio and the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York have earned them a reputation in America as talented museum architects.

This is only the third time in the prize's history that it's been shared between two people. (Oscar Niemeyer and the late Gordon Bunshaft of SOM shared the prize in 1988; partners Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron were co-laureates in 2001.)

Other previous laureates include Peter Zumthor (2009), Jean Nouvel (2008), Herzog and de Meuron (2001), Rem Koolhaas (2000), and Renzo Piano (1998).

FIRST ROW:
• 1) Kazuyo Sejima (right) and Ryue Nishizawa (left)
• 2-3) O Museum IIda, Nagano, Japan, 1999
• 4) Christian Dior Building, Tokyo, Japan, 2003
• 5) Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio, 2006

SECOND ROW:
• 6) Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio, 2006
• 7) 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Ishikawa, Japan, 2004
• 8) New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, New York, 2007
• 9-10) Rolex Learning Center, Lausanne, Switzerland, 2009

Photos: Takasi Okamoto (1), courtesy of SANAA via Pritzker Prize 2010; Hisao Suzuki (2-10), courtesy of SANAA via Pritzker Prize 2010

Comments (5)

I love the work of Sanaa! Great to see this recognition for them.

They look very excited about the news.

The 21st Century Museum is absolutely incredible. It's based on the concepts of a park, and when I visited I felt it definitely met that goal. It also contains very interactive and creative modern works, not traditional forms, which I really enjoyed.

If you ever visit Japan, I recommend the city of Kanazawa, where the 21st Century Museum is located. There's a beautiful park nearby the museum, as well as a samurai district and geisha district that are both beautiful. The city also has great shopping. The city combines both modern and ancient Japan in a neat, compact package.

The New Museum is a terrible building. Every floor is like a basement. The worse thing about the building is how cramped it is. You have to worm your way to the bathroom, which is a tiny, airless, unventilated cubby-hole. There is absolutely no sense of pleasure anywhere in this building, from the door handles to the view.

I recommend this article as a follow up

http://famousarchitect.blogspot.com/2010/04/sanaa.html

like last year's winner a great choice