Japanese architect Riken Yamamoto will receive the 2024 Pritzker Architecture Prize
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https://www.archdaily.com/1014028/japanese-architect-riken-yamamoto-receives-the-2024-pritzker-architecture-prize
Japanese architect and social activist Riken Yamamoto has been selected as the winner of the 2024 Pritzker Architecture Prize. Yamamoto is known for establishing a “kinship between public and private realms” and creating “architecture as the background and foreground of everyday life.” He is the 53rd winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize and the ninth architect from Japan to receive this award, after Arata Isozaki. Shigeru Ban, Kazuyo Sejima, Ryue Nishizawa, Kenzō Tange, Fumihiko Maki, Toyo Ito and Tadao Ando. Succeeding David Chipperfield in 2023, Francis Kéré in 2022, and Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal in 2021, Yamamoto will receive the Pritzker Prize during the 46th Pritzker Prize Ceremony in Chicago this spring, and the Laureate Lecture in 2024 will take place at SR Crown Hall, Illinois Institute of Technology, in collaboration with the Chicago Architecture Center, on May 16th.
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One of the things we need most in the future of cities is to create conditions through architecture that multiply the opportunities for people to come together and interact. By carefully blurring the line between public and private, Yamamoto positively contributes to enabling community beyond the mission itself. He is a calming architect who brings dignity to everyday life. Normality becomes extraordinary. Calmness leads to splendor. – Alejandro Aravena, chairman of the jury and winner of the 2016 Pritzker Prize.
Known for “creating awareness in the community of the responsibility of social demand, questioning the discipline of architecture to calibrate each architectural response and, above all, for reminding us that in architecture how “Determination of the People” Yamamoto's works, built over five decades, are located throughout Japan, the People's Republic of China, the Republic of Korea and Switzerland. His portfolio includes private homes, social housing, primary schools, university buildings, institutions, public spaces and urban planning. Yamamoto was appointed an academician by the International Academy of Architecture in 2013 and has received various awards throughout his career, including the 2010 Japan Institute of Architects Prize for the Yokosuka Museum of Art. Founded in response to the aftermath of the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami He founded the Local Area Republic Labo, a research institute dedicated to community engagement through architectural design, and in 2018 introduced the Local Republic Award, recognizing young architects shaping the future.
Riken Yamamoto was born in Beijing, People's Republic of China in 1945 and moved to Yokohama, Japan shortly after the end of World War II, where he still lives today. His first experience with architecture came at the age of 17, when he visited the Kôfuku-ji Temple in Nara, Japan, originally built in 730 and reconstructed in 1426, and was fascinated by “the wooden tower lit by the moonlight.” He graduated from Nihon University, Department of Architecture, College of Science and Technology in 1968 and received a Master of Arts in Architecture from the Faculty of Architecture, Tokyo University of the Arts in 1971. In 1973 he founded his office Riken Yamamoto & Field business.
For me, recognizing space means recognizing a whole community. The current architectural approach emphasizes privacy and negates the need for social relationships. Yet we can honor the freedom of each individual as we live together as a republic in architectural space and promote harmony across cultures and life stages. – Riken Yamamoto, winner of the 2024 Pritzker Architecture Prize.
Redefining boundaries: The threshold, a place of encounter
In the early years of his career, Yamamoto dedicated himself to understanding communities, cultures and civilizations. He traveled extensively across countries and continents and came to the conclusion that the concept of a “threshold” that demarcates public and private spaces is widely understood. This interpretation led him to reassess the boundaries between public and private spaces as social opportunities and to commit to the belief that all spaces can enrich and serve the consideration of an entire community, not just those who inhabit them. He rethinks borders as spaces themselves and breathes life into the transition zone between the public and private spheres.
Yamamoto also developed his architectural style by drawing inspiration from traditional Japanese machiya and Greek oikos dwellings, which were historically intertwined with urban centers. His residence Gazebo (Yokohama, Japan 1986) was designed to encourage social interaction with neighbors through its terraces and roofs. Similarly, the Ishii House (Kawasaki, Japan 1978), built for two artists, features a pavilion-like space that seamlessly demonstrates its innovative approach to combining indoor and outdoor spaces for community engagement.
Harmonious societies and community engagement
Yamamoto defines community as “the feeling of sharing a space” and deconstructs traditional notions of freedom and privacy. With these perspectives, he designed inviting single-family homes that integrate natural and built environments, beginning with the Yamakawa Villa (Nagano, Japan 1977) and the Hotakubo Housing project (Kumamoto, Japan 1991), a social housing project aimed at fostering connections between cultures and generations through communal ways of life. Later, in 2010, he designed a larger housing project, the Pangyo Housing project, which ensured that even residents living alone are not isolated by providing transparent ground floor volumes that promoted connectivity between neighbors without imposing specific social norms. In terms of civic projects, Yamamoto envisioned the Fussa City Hall (Tokyo, Japan 2008) as two medium-sized towers that harmonize with the surrounding low-rise neighborhood. The towers' concave bases invite visitors to sit back and relax, while the green public roof and lower levels accommodate diverse public activities and programs that promote community engagement and interaction.
Transparency, urban privacy and social interaction
Transparency in form, material and philosophy remained the foundation of Yamamoto's architectural vision. He introduced an urban planning concept that emphasized evolution as a crucial element in the development of Ryokuen-toshi, Inter-Junction City (Yokohama, Japan 1994). At the heart of this approach was a regulation requiring all buildings to allow passage through their properties to promote cohesion between neighboring properties and create a sense of unity between neighboring landowners. His commitment to promoting social interaction extended to large projects in which he skillfully adapted his architectural language, such as the Saitama Prefectural University (Koshigaya, Japan 1999), the Tianjin Library (Tianjin, People's Republic of China 2012) and the Koyasu Elementary School ( Yokohama, Japan 2018). In addition, the Hiroshima Nishi Fire Station (Hiroshima, Japan, 2000) presents itself as a completely transparent project, allowing both visitors and passers-by to look into the central atrium and provide a glimpse into the firefighters' daily activities and training sessions.
The important buildings also include the Nagoya Zokei University (Nagoya, Japan, 2022), THE CIRCLE at Zurich Airport (Zurich, Switzerland, 2020), the Tianjin Library (Tianjin, People's Republic of China, 2012) and Jian Wai SOHO (Beijing, People's Republic ). of China, 2004), Ecoms House (Tosu, Japan, 2004), Shinonome Canal Court CODAN (Tokyo, Japan, 2003), Future University Hakodate (Hakodate, Japan, 2000), Iwadeyama Junior High School (Ōsaki, Japan, 1996) and Hotakubo Housing (Kumamoto, Japan, 1991).
Yamamoto is a newly appointed visiting professor at Kanagawa University (Yokohama, Japan). He was a visiting professor at the Tokyo University of the Arts (Tokyo, Japan 2022-2024) and previously taught at Nihon University, Graduate School of Engineering (Tokyo, Japan 2011-2013); Yokohama National University, Graduate School of Architecture (Yokohama, Japan 2007-2011); Kogakuin University, Faculty of Architecture (Tokyo, Japan 2002-2007); and was President of Nagoya Zokei University of Art and Design (Nagoya, Japan 2018-2022). He was appointed an Academician by the International Academy of Architecture (2013) and has received numerous awards throughout his career, including the Japan Institute of Architects Award for the Yokosuka Museum of Art (2010), the Public Buildings Prize (2004 and 2006) and Good Design Gold Award (2004 and 2005), Architectural Institute of Japan Prize (1988 and 2002), Japan Arts Academy Award (2001) and Mainichi Art Awards (1998).
Jury honor for the Pritzker Prize 2024
The Pritzker Prize is awarded in recognition of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment that have continually made significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture. In his long, coherent and rigorous career, Riken Yamamoto has managed to create architecture as both the background and foreground of everyday life, blurring the boundaries between its public and private dimensions and increasing the possibilities for spontaneous encounters of people through precise, rational design strategies multiplied.
Through the strong, consistent quality of his buildings, he aims to celebrate, enhance and enrich the lives of individuals – from children to the elderly – and their social connections. And he achieves this through a self-explanatory, yet modest and relevant architecture with structural honesty and precise scale, paying careful attention to the surrounding landscape.
His architecture clearly expresses his beliefs through the modular structure and simplicity of his form. He does not prescribe any activities, but rather enables people to shape their own lives in his buildings with elegance, normality, poetry and joy.
Riken Yamamoto consciously deals with a wide variety of building types and scales in the projects he selects. Whether he designs private homes or public infrastructure, schools or fire stations, town halls or museums, the communal and sociable dimension is always present. His ongoing, careful, and comprehensive attention to community has produced public interworking space systems that encourage people to come together in diverse ways. For example, the entire building space of Saitama Prefectural University (1999) is designed as a community.
Yamamoto suggests, rather than imposes, this shared dimension through subtle but precise architectural interventions. By including spaces for shared activities in addition to the main function of his buildings, he enables these to be integrated into the everyday life of the community and not only be used in exceptional cases. The two departments for the collaboration of students and researchers in the Future University in Hakodate (2000) or the transparent louvered glass facade exposing the inner workings of the department in the Hiroshima Fire Station (2000) are examples of his belief in the concept of transparency as an expression of functionality and Accessibility of the space for users and viewers alike.
As a young architect born in China and trained in Japan, he felt the urgency to complete his own education with a true understanding of the “other than self.” He traveled extensively, not (primarily) to visit famous monuments, but rather to experience first-hand the culture and everyday life of communities on other continents. From North to South America, across the Mediterranean to the Middle East and Asia, Yamamoto has explored the roots and history of community life to make his own contribution to the modernization of the contemporary city through architecture. For him, a building has a public function even if it is private.
Riken Yamamoto is not an architectural historian, but he learns from the past and from different cultures. As an architect, he does not copy the past, but adapts it, reuses it and develops it further to show that the fundamentals remain relevant. Yamamoto has expanded the profession's toolbox both past and future to provide, in very different ways and at very different scales, the most relevant response to the challenges of both the built environment and collective life.
To create awareness in the community of the responsibility of social demand, to question the discipline of architecture, to calibrate each individual architectural response, and above all to remind us that in architecture as in democracy Spaces must be created through determination Among the People Riken Yamamoto is named the 2024 Pritzker Prize winner.
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