Arata Isozaki: The Latest Architecture and News

The Pritzker Prize is the most important award in the field of architecture, awarded to a living architect whose built work "has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity through the art of architecture." The Prize rewards individuals, not entire offices, as took place in 2000 (when the jury selected Rem Koolhaas instead of his firm OMA) or in 2016 (with Alejandro Aravena selected instead of Elemental); however, the prize can also be awarded to multiple individuals working together, as took place in 2001 (Herzog & de Meuron), 2010 (Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA), and 2017 (Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem, and Ramon Vilalta of RCR Arquitectes).

Responsible use and consumption of natural resources and the impacts of the building industry have been ongoing concerns in the field of architecture and urban planning. In the past, concepts such as clean slates, mass demolitions, and building brand new structures were widely accepted and encouraged. Nowadays, a transformation seems to be taking place, calling for new approaches such as recycling, adaptive reuse, and renovations, taking advantage of what is already there. This article explores a selection of projects and provides a glimpse into interventions by renowned architects in pre-existing buildings.

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Examining the work of Tokyo architect Toyo Ito (b. 1941) – particularly his now seminal Sendai Mediatheque (1995-2001), Serpentine Gallery (London, 2002, with Cecil Balmond), TOD's Omotesando Building (Tokyo, 2004), Tama Art University Library (Tokyo, 2007), and National Taichung Theater (2009-16) – will immediately become apparent these buildings’ structural innovations and spatial, non-hierarchical organizations. Although these structures all seem to be quite diverse, there is one unifying theme – the architect’s consistent commitment to erasing fixed boundaries between inside and outside and relaxing spatial divisions between various programs within. There is continuity in how these buildings are explored. They are conceived as systems rather than objects and they never really end; one could imagine their formations and patterns to continue to evolve and expand pretty much endlessly.

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This year, architecture’s highest honor, the Pritzker Prize, has been granted to Grafton Architects, a Dublin-based architectural firm mainly ran by female partners Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara. For the first time ever in its 42-year history, due to the constraints set by Covid-19 global pandemic, the organizers of the Pritzker Prize decided to use Livestream the award ceremony. Having reached the end of 2020, ArchDaily has summed up what current and previous Pritzker Prize winners have accomplished during this turbulent year.

Qatar has been radically reshaped by growth and development. The sovereign state transformed since the second half of the twentieth century after the discovery of the Dukhan oil field in 1940. Capitalizing on over 70 years of economic development, Qatar now has the highest per capita income in the world. Reflecting the country’s wealth, its modern architectural projects are being built at a monumental scale.

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Japanese architect, teacher, and theorist Arata Isozaki (born 23 July, 1931) helped bring Japanese influence to some of the most prestigious buildings of the 20th century, and continues to work at the highest level today. Initially working in a distinctive form of modernism, Isozaki developed his own thoughts and theories on architecture into a complex style that invokes pure shape and space as much as it evokes post-modern ideas. Highly adaptable and socially concerned, his work has been acclaimed for being sensitive to context while still making statements of its own.

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Arata Isozaki, the Japanese architect and winner of the Pitzker Prize 2019, is not only renowned for his fruitful portfolio of works built all over the world (more than a hundred) but also for his continuous input to the theory of urbanism, including texts and proposals. 

It is precisely in the field of urbanism, that he developed one of his most interesting non-built projects: the futurist master plan, known as City in the Air, in the Shinjuku neighborhood in Tokyo, Japan.

In May 1985, an old theater and concert hall opened its doors to the public for the opening of a brand new nightclub in New York City. Located on 126 East 14th Street, the project was commissioned by entrepreneurs Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, owners of the also famous club Studio 54, and was conceived as a vibrant and luminous independent structure arranged inside a rather classic shell, which appears as a beautiful backdrop behind the clean geometry of Isozaki.

As The New York Times pointed out in its May 20, 1985 edition: 'Arata Isozaki is at once a great eminence of Japanese architecture and a source of some of its freshest thinking. And all sides of Mr. Isozaki are visible in the Palladium'.

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Named 2019 Pritzker Prize Laureate, Japanese architect Arata Isozaki is incredibly prolific and influential among his contemporaries. Deeply aligned with the period of change and reinvention that Japan experimented after Second World War and Allied Occupation, Isozaki has developed a solid career on a truly global scale, avoiding being labeled in a specific style throughout his life.

Take a peek into Japanese architect and theorist Arata Isozaki’s studio in the first of PLANE—SITE’s new video series, Time-Space-Existence. In this inaugural film, Isozaki discusses the Japanese concept of the space and time that exists in-between things, called "ma." Especially inspiring is Isozaki’s refusal to be stuck in one architectural style, as he describes how each of his designs is a specific solution born out of the project’s context.

The prolific and varied career of 2019 Pritzker Laureate Arata Isozaki, which includes more than 100 works built on virtually every continent, gives us a huge amount of facts that are relevant to understanding his life and architecture. Considered the first Japanese architect to develop his work on a truly global scale, Isozaki took special care to respond to the context and the specific requirements of each project, expanding the heterogeneity of his work and resulting in a variety of styles from vernacular to high tech.

See below 20 fascinating facts that illuminate his particular genius:

Today, Japanese architect and theorist Arata Isozaki was announced the winner of this year’s Pritzker Prize, the most highly regarded award in the world of architecture. Since the 60’s, Isozaki has been showing outstanding innovative ideas in his works, influencing eastern professionals with the forward-thinking approach that takes its roots from Japan. The 87-year-old architect boasts multiple built projects of different scales all over the world — from Tokyo and Shanghai, to Barcelona and Qatar. Let’s take a look at the immense list of Arata Isozaki’s projects and recreate the architects' professional development path since his very first works.

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2019 Pritzker Laureate Arata Isozaki has been designing for more than half a century; several of his works are considered architectural classics due to their influence and impact on international design.

His work combines a number of styles, from vernacular to high tech  and organic to brutalist, giving his projects a sculptural and undeniably photogenic appearance. With such richness in design, it is perhaps no wonder that people around the world are excited to photograph his work.

We've selected 23 of the most beautiful photos of Isozaki's work posted to Instagram by users across the globe. Our selection, after the break:

Gensler's Shanghai Tower has won the 2015 Emporis Skyscraper Award. Selected from over 300 buildings of over 100 meters in height completed in 2015, the Emporis jury was impressed by the Shanghai Tower's "elegant spiraling cylindrical shape," and the "extraordinary energy efficiency" provided, in part, by the building's double-skin facade.

Currently the world's second tallest building at 632 meters, the Shanghai Tower becomes the second Chinese building to win the Emporis award, after Zaha Hadid Architects' Wangjing SOHO took the prize last year. In addition to Gensler's first-place project, Emporis also recognized 9 runners-up including Rafael Viñoly Architects' 432 Park Avenue, Arquitectonica's Icon Bay in Miami, and the Evolution Tower in Moscow by Kettle Collective and RMJM Edinburgh. Read on to see all ten awarded projects.

This article originally appeared on guggenheim.org/blogs under the title "Nine Guggenheim Exhibitions Designed by Architects," and is used with permission.

Exhibition design is never straightforward, but that is especially true within the highly unconventional architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum. Hanging a painting in a traditional “box” gallery can be literally straightforward, whereas every exhibition at the Guggenheim is the reinvention of one of the world’s most distinctive and iconic buildings. The building mandates site-specific exhibition design—partition walls, pedestals, vitrines, and benches are custom-fabricated for every show. At the same time, these qualities of the building present an opportunity for truly memorable, unique installations. Design happens simultaneously on a micro and macro scale—creating display solutions for individual works of art while producing an overall context and flow that engages the curatorial vision for the exhibition. This is why the museum’s stellar in-house exhibition designers all have an architecture background. They have developed intimate relationships with every angle and curve of the quarter-mile ramp and sloping walls.