Following the Royal Institute of British Architects’ announcement that the founders of Japanese studio SANAA have received the 2025 Royal Gold Medal, we highlight 10 of the duo’s most fascinating tasks.
Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa have been named winners of this 12 months’s prestigious award for his or her in depth portfolio of labor, which was praised by RIBA president Muyiwa Oki for balancing “performance with profound magnificence”.
Since its institution in 1995, Tokyo-based studio SANAA has grow to be well-known for its cultural buildings around the globe, typically accomplished with white and clear surfaces.
Among the many studio’s key tasks are the New Museum of Up to date Artwork in New York, which consists of a low-lying round construction wrapped with glass, and the stepped Sydney Trendy gallery in Australia.
The award is the newest addition to the duo’s assortment of prestigious accolades, which additionally contains the 2010 Pritzker Structure Prize, the 2022 Praemium Imperiale for structure and the 2025 Le Prix Charlotte Perriand.
“Now we have all the time believed that structure can remodel and restore environments, serving to us to narrate to our environment, nature and one another,” mentioned SANAA.
“All through our careers we’ve got tried to make areas that carry individuals collectively, inviting them to think about new methods of residing and studying collectively.”
Learn on for 10 notable tasks by SANAA:
twenty first Century Museum of Up to date Artwork, Japan, 2004
Accomplished in 2004, the twenty first Century Museum of Up to date Artwork in Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan, consists of a low-lying round construction wrapped with glass.
Alongside its central artwork galleries, it hosts public areas together with a library, lecture corridor and kids’s workshop.
New Museum of Up to date Artwork, US, 2007
Composed of a set of stacked blocks, the eight-storey New Museum of Up to date Artwork was accomplished in 2007 by SANAA alongside Gensler on a compact website in downtown Manhattan.
Its shifting white volumes, that are wrapped in a layer of aluminium mesh, are designed to make sure every gallery receives pure daylight. Terraces run across the constructing’s east and south facades.
“The New Museum is a mix of stylish and concrete,” SANAA mentioned. “We have been decided to make a constructing that felt like that.”
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Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, UK, 2009
Sejima and Nishizawa used aluminium to assemble the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in 2009, which featured a reflective cover meant to “soften into the environment”.
Raised by a community of skinny columns, the sinuous cover flowed throughout the positioning to create a sheltered area for guests that wrapped across the neighbouring timber.
“The pavilion is floating aluminium, drifting freely between the timber like smoke,” the duo mentioned. “It’s a sheltered extension of the park the place individuals can learn, loosen up and luxuriate in beautiful summer time days.”
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Rolex Studying Heart, Switzerland, 2010
The Rolex Studying Heart, a college constructing for the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, was accomplished by the studio in 2010 in Switzerland.
Open to each college students and the general public, the 20,000-square-metre centre homes social and research areas, libraries, cafes and eating places sheltered beneath an undulating roof.
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Louvre-Lens, France, 2012
An outpost of the Musée du Louvre, the Louvre-Lens was accomplished by SANAA alongside New York-based studio Imrey Culbert in northern France after the studios received a contest to design it in 2006.
Accomplished in 2012, the 360-metre-long constructing contains a sequence of rectangular volumes that transition from glazed to brushed aluminium exteriors and have refined curves.
“The venture avoids the strict, rectilinear shapes that will have conflicted with the refined character of the positioning, in addition to of free shapes that will have been overly restrictive from the angle of the museum’s inner operations,” Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa mentioned.
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The River, US, 2015
This sinuous construction constructed from glass, concrete, metal and wooden was designed to border public services, equivalent to a library and youth centre, for Grace Farms – a 32-hectare nature reserve in New Canaan, Connecticut.
Named The River, the construction’s natural type was designed by Sejima and Nishizawa to suit into its pure environment, with its slender roof supported by skinny, frequently spaced columns.
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Tsuruoka Cultural Heart, Japan, 2018
Positioned in Tsuruoka, a metropolis on Japan’s northwest coast, this cultural centre is outlined by its sweeping metallic roofs designed to harmonise with a neighbouring historic constructing.
The venue is designed as a civic hub, internet hosting a multipurpose corridor for each cultural and creative actions within the area.
Bocconi College of Administration, Italy, 2019
Perforated metallic screens have been used to cloak this curved cluster of volumes, designed by SANAA for Bocconi College in Milan.
Interspersed by courtyards knowledgeable by Milanese palazzi, the venture was designed to accommodate the Bocconi College of Administration in addition to a sports activities centre for the college.
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La Samaritaine, France, 2021
The studio led the in depth renovation of the historic La Samaritaine division retailer in Paris in 2021, following the shop’s closure in 2005 over security considerations.
Commissioned by the homeowners, French luxurious items firm LVMH, the renovation concerned the addition of a brand new undulating glass facade in addition to the restoration of many authentic artwork nouveau and artwork deco particulars.
Discover out extra about La Samaritaine ›
Sydney Trendy, Australia, 2022
A sequence of stepped pavilions make up Sydney Trendy, an extension to the Artwork Gallery of New South Wales that SANAA opened in 2022.
Located on a hillside overlooking Sydney Harbour’s Woolloomooloo Bay, the museum is organized round a glass-walled atrium and was designed to distinction with the prevailing artwork gallery’s neo-classical type.
Discover out extra about Sydney Trendy ›
