Japanese architect Riken Yamamoto has been named winner of the 2024 Pritzker Prize, architecture's most prestigious honor. Riken is widely known for simple, elegant structures that centralize and facilitate social interaction. Often employing mundane and comparatively inexpensive materials such as wood, aluminum, and glass, he designed buildings ranging from a private summer home in a forest, to a huge cluster of window-filled office buildings, to a seaside museum with a sloped roof that allows views of the sea in front and mountains behind. Yamamoto's structures are typically porous, allowing interactions between people, between people and animals, and between people and nature.
“Whether you design private houses or public infrastructures, schools or fire stations, town halls or museums, the common and convivial dimension is always present”, said the award jury in a statement. “Their constant, careful, and substantive attention to the community has generated systems of interoperable public spaces that encourage people to come together in different ways.”
Born in Beijing in 1945, Yamamoto was just a few years old when his father, an engineer, died. Yamamoto's mother moved the family to Yokohama, where the future architect witnessed firsthand the reconstruction of Japan following air raids conducted by U.S. forces during World War II. This process, combined with the desire to imitate his father, led him to pursue architecture. Graduating from Nihon University, he earned his master's degree at Tokyo University of the Arts before establishing his practice, “Riken Yamamoto & Field Shop,” in 1973. Among his most renowned projects are the Future University of Hakodate in which glass classrooms and functional spaces encourage interaction and a sense of human scale within a larger structure; the Ecoms House in Tosu, which is made of aluminum and models an inexpensive and flexible method of prefabricated housing; and the transparent Hiroshima Nishi Fire Station, whose glass walls and floors allow passersby an unobstructed view of the firefighters training inside.
I am often asked: “Why does Yamamoto make such a strange house?” he referred to the New York Times. “I always explain the meaning: the community is the most important thing. The whole family has a relationship with the community.”
Source: Artforum