Ryue nishizawa biography of donald
Ryue Nishizawa: Travel from Places to Spaces
Architect Ryue Nishizawa (b. 1966) has become one of the faces of Japanese architecture today. While maintaining his own eponymous office, he is also a principal at SANAA, which received The Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2010 for their ‘deceptively simple’ structures. With projects across the globe, Papersky decided to sit down with Nishizawa to talk about his travels, sense of place as well as the influence of architecture on our lives and on the future of Japan.
You have lived in Japan most of your life and in the last decade you’ve traveled a lot. How has this changed how you think about architecture?
Sure, it’s definitely changed me. Before going abroad, I didn’t really formulate my own concept of Japan since everyone around me was Japanese. When I saw cities in Europe, I was amazed by their beauty, a feeling I had not felt the same way in Tokyo before. I appreciated Europeans’ way of creating atmosphere for comfortable living like in homes, hotels, parks, rivers or on the streets. Like people living in Italian cities, even if they don’t have a lot of money, a lot of possibilities allow them to enjoy their life- going to the market, getting something cheap to eat, then going to the park. I saw the city provide its inhabitants with many beautiful moments. When non-Japanese start appearing around you, you start to think more about yourself and how people portray you and what you do. So, I also started to become more aware of comparisons like the big differences between American and European architecture. In Europe, architecture is very brut- I mean, imposing and rough, almost aggressive in its reconstruction and renovation- always adding on top. I think the work of Le Corbusier is very brut. And this was something I had never seen before in Japan. It’s not precise like Japanese architecture, which at the same time I don’t feel any particular energy from, but European architecture showed me that people live in
SANAA
Established by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa in 1995, Japanese firm SANAA has since become a leading force of the twenty first century architectural scene. It is with a quiet confidence that the duo has swept the world off its feet with their distinctly minimalist, highly sensitive and thoughtful designs. SANAA’s extensive portfolio includes the playfully stacked building of the New Museum in New York, the circular production facility of the Vitra Campus, as well as the serene Louvre-Lens in France.
Kazuyo Sejima, the feminine half of the internationally acclaimed designer duo, was born in 1956. She studied Architecture in Tokio where, after receiving her degree, she started working for the office of Toyo Ito. Not long after, Sejima opened her own studio. In 1992 she was named the Japan Institute of Architects’ Young Architect of the Year. One of the first people she employed in her practice was Ryue Nishizawa. Born in 1966, he graduated with a Master’s degree in Architecture at the Yokohama National University. As a student, Nishizawa had also worked for Toyo Ito, where he met Sejima. After working together for several years, the two formed the partnership Sejima and Nishizawa and Associates, or SANAA as it is known today.
Aside from Sejima’s current architectural practice with her partner, she is active in academia, teaching at multiple universities worldwide. Nishizawa has maintained his own firm, Office of Ryue Nishizawa, parallel to SANAA since 1997. Both take on small-scale individual projects outside of their partnership. However, they join forces to work on more ambitious tasks for which they have become synonymous.
Design Philosophy of SANAA
Even in their earliest projects in Japan, their distinctive style manifested itself with a clarity that is both easily defined and misinterpreted. Their signature understated white spaces are stripped of any
RIBA Royal Gold Medallist 2025: SANAA
The award of the 2025 Royal Gold Medal to SANAA partners Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa honours an extraordinary body of work. Their buildings are diverse but with common qualities: boldly innovative, refined – sometimes to the point of near-immateriality – and both planned and realised with diagrammatic clarity, suggesting rare confidence and determination. And yet talking to the pair – via video call from their Tokyo studio – they are strikingly self-effacing.
When I ask, for example, if they might use the medal win to broadcast ideas that are close to their hearts, they offer no bombastic manifesto. ‘This is just my personal feeling,’ says Nishizawa slowly, ‘but the diversity of history is something important to discuss. We come from Asian history but we learned so much from Le Corbusier, Mies, Álvaro Siza. The question is what is world history, what is local history, what kind of relation do they have?’
The Gold Medal itself, first awarded in 1848, has been a largely European affair until recent years, although the enormous influence of Japan on modernism was perhaps belatedly and indirectly reflected in medals for Kenzō Tange in 1965, his student Arata Isozaki in 1986, Tadao Ando in 1987 and Toyo Ito in 2006. Following Ito in receiving the award is particularly gratifying for Sejima, 68, who spent six years in his office at the start of her career before setting up on her own in 1987.
Nishizawa, 58, is also an alumnus of Ito’s office and became an early staff member in Sejima’s practice. In 1995 they co-founded SANAA, initially as a way to enter international competitions. Its work ranges from the Louvre’s offshoot in Pas-de-Calais to a campus for Bocconi University in Milan.
12
Unusually, however, both also maintain their own individual firms, with a separate staff and heal Join us in taking a stand against the short attention architecture media. Divisare is the result of an effort of selection and classification of contemporary architecture conducted for over twenty years. Patient work, done with care, image after image, project after project, to offer you the ideal tool with which to organize your knowledge of contemporary architecture. Instead of a quick, distracted web, we want a slow, attentive one. Instead of hastily perused information, we prefer knowledge calmly absorbed. This is why Divisare is a place to perceive architecture slowly, without distractions. No click — like — tweet — share, no advertising, banners, pop-ups. Just architecture, no more and no less. If you like what we’re doing, please Subscribe. You will get full access to divisare archive and you will help us keep the lights on. Find out more about why divisare exists, what guide us and what our readers say about usdivisare
Help us swim against the tide.
Divisare subscription is free for teachers & students
No Ads. Ever.