Nacasa & Partners

Nikken Space Design Osaka Office / Nikken Space Design

January 26, 2016

+ 14

Architects: Nikken Space Design
Area: 464 m²
Year: 2014

K8 in Kyoto / Florian Busch Architects

January 22, 2016

+ 14

Architects: Florian Busch Architects
Area: 156 m²
Year: 2015
Professionals: Mugishima Corp., OAK

St. Voile Chapel / Kasahara Design Work

April 22, 2015

+ 12

Architects: Kasahara Design Work
Area: 161 m²
Year: 2014

Miu Miu Aoyama Store / Herzog & de Meuron

April 01, 2015

+ 7

Architects: Herzog & de Meuron
Area: 269 m²
Year: 2015
Professionals: Takenaka Corporation, Emmer Pfenninger

An Interview with Zhang Lei, AZL Architects

February 03, 2015

“We have to try to work with scale and memory. I think in the last twenty years the main problem is that we lost the 归宿感 [sense of belonging]. The people here have been moving from house to house for a long time, the result is that we don’t have a feeling of home… even if you are staying in a nice house or villa you don’t consider it as an ideal or permanent home where you could stay. This might be considered the problem. More than ten years ago we used to have that feeling, the sense to belong to a specific space. We used to live in neighbourhoods where we had a social background, a community, now you don’t have any community, you don’t see the neighbors any more. Now Chinese people are becoming lonely, they are losing that feeling and becoming 'homeless'.” - Zhang Lei, Nanjing, 2013

+ 12

House of a Backstage / y+M

August 22, 2014

+ 18

Architects: y+M design office

Hotel WIND / TEAM BLDG

December 23, 2013

+ 38

Architects: Team BLDG
Year: 2013

2013 Pritzker Prize: Toyo Ito

March 19, 2013

“Although Mr. Ito has built a great number of buildings in his career, in my view, he has been working on one project all along, -- to push the boundaries of architecture. And to achieve that goal, he is not afraid of letting go what he has accomplished before.” -- Yung Ho Chang, Member of the Pritzker Jury for 2013

Toyo Ito has been announced as the Pritzker laureate for 2013. Ito is the thirty-seventh recipient of the Pritzker Prize and its sixth Japanese recipient.

The Pritzker jury applauded Ito for his ability to synthesize many architectural languages and functionalities in the expression of one personal “syntax,” inspired by the organic structures found in nature and the sensual nature of the human user.

Calling him a “creator of timeless buildings,” the Pritzker Jury further praised Ito for “infusing his designs with a spiritual dimension and for the poetics that transcend all his works.” Among those works, the Jury singled out his Sendai Mediatheque, whose innovative use of structural tubes “permitted new interior spatial qualities,” TOD’S Omotesando building in Tokyo, “where the building skin also serves as structure,” and Tokyo’s Tama Art University Library as particularly inspiring.

In response to the accolade, the highest award in the profession of architecture, Ito humbly expressed that, with each project, he only becomes more “painfully aware of [his] inadequacy, and it turns into energy to challenge the next project.” For that reason, Ito professed, “I will never fix my architectural style and never be satisfied with my works.”

Read more of the Jury’s selection of Toyo Ito as the 2013 Pritzker Laureate, after the break...

The Life and Work of Toyo Ito, 2013 Pritzker Laureate

March 17, 2013

Until his third year of high school, Toyo Ito’s passion was not architecture, but baseball.

Fortunately for us all (and almost assuredly for the Pritzker laureate himself), he soon switched career paths.

Born in Seoul in 1941, Ito moved to Japan at the tender age of two. From the age of 12 (when his father died) to the time he went to University, Ito was part of the family business: making miso (bean paste). However, upon attending The University of Tokyo from 1965-1969, architecture became his life work.

Read more on the life and work of Toyo Ito, the 2013 Pritzker Laureate, after the break...

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