Riken Yamamoto, a Japanese architect born in Beijing in April 1945 and based in Yokohama since he was young, is the winner of the 2024 edition of the Pritzker, the main global architectural award. The jury has valued his architecture at the service of the community, which enhances spaces for meeting and interaction, both in his public buildings (for schools, universities, museums, town halls or fire stations) and in private housing developments. “Current architecture emphasizes privacy, denying necessary social relationships,” Yamamoto maintains. However, it is possible to celebrate the freedom of each individual while living together in an architectural space, fostering harmony between cultures and generations.”
The architecture of the winner is usually characterized by the purity of lines, transparency, an often essential geometry, order and, as noted, the search for spaces of relationship, by attenuating the limits between interior and exterior, between architecture and nature.
Yamamoto's career, who trained at the universities of Nihon and Tokyo and traveled throughout Asia, America and Europe in his younger years, has spanned half a century and has developed mainly in Japan, but also in countries such as China, South Korea or Switzerland. After his start in the 70s, he stood out with his own house Gazebo (1986) in Yokohama, a metal construction with many terraces for socializing with neighbors. Or with the Hotakubo homes (1991), in Kumamoto. At Saitama University (1999), with nine buildings connected by terraces, he developed his idea of a total community.
The Nishi Fire Station (2000), in Hiroshima, is one of his best-known works, totally transparent, to bring the lives of these officials closer to the citizens. The Tianjin Library (2012) in China, or the Yokosuka Museum of Art (2006) or Nagoya University (2022) are also characterized by transparency and elegance of lines. The Circle (2020), its spectacular multifunctional complex next to the Zurich airport, in Switzerland, also deserved a lot of attention.
With the award to Yamamoto, the Pritzker abounds in its tendency in recent years to prioritize architectures with social concern over others more concerned with the formal resolution of each building. If Shigeru Ban (awarded in 2014) has stood out for his buildings for natural disasters; Aravena (2016), for its incremental homes; Lacaton/Vassal (2021), for their ingenious budget projects; Diébédo Francis Kéré (2022), for his work destined for precarious African countries; and David Chipperfield (2023), for his excellent work rehabilitating old buildings... Yamamoto (2024) is a champion of architecture conceived as a space for meeting and interaction.
Yamamoto is the ninth architect from Japan to win the Pritzker, breaking the tie that until now was maintained between that country and the United States, which still has eight laureates and has not added a new one since the 2005 edition. The United Kingdom is, with five authors, the third country by number of winners. In Spain, Rafael Moneo (1996) and RCR (2017) have been awarded.
Sou Fujimoto and Kengo Kuma, Yamamoto's compatriots, seemed to be the most cited Japanese architects in the Pritzker pools this year. But Yamamoto has gone ahead of them, opposing his architecture with a public vocation to the often more expressive and iconic proposals of Fujimoto or Kuma.
The Pritzker jury had Alejandro Aravena as president, and Manuela Ducá-Lazio as executive director, with its members Barry Bergdoll, Deborah Berke, Stephen Breyer, André Aranha Corrêa do Lago, Kazuyo Sejima and Wang Shu. The Pritzker award ceremony to Riken Yamamoto as the fifty-third laureate will take place at the Art Institute of Chicago in May.
