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2010 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureates announced

Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, partners in the architectural firm, SANAA, have been chosen as the 2010 Laureates of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. The formal ceremony for what has come to be known throughout the world as architecture's highest honor will be held on May 17 on historic Ellis Island in New York. At that time, a $100,000 grant and bronze medallions will be bestowed on the two architects.

While most of their work is in Japan, Sejima and Nishizawa have designed projects in Germany, England, Spain, France, the Netherlands and the United States, under their combined name SANAA. The first SANAA project in the United States began construction in 2004 in Ohio—a Glass Pavilion for the Toledo Museum of Art. Completed in 2006, it houses the museum's vast collection of glass artworks, reflecting the city's history when it was a major center of glass production.

While that building was still under construction, the New Museum of New York City broke ground in 2005 at 235 Bowery. Completed in 2007, the building has been described as "a sculptural stack of rectilinear boxes dynamically shifted off-axis around a central steel core."

The jury citation specifically mentions these projects as well as two projects in Japan: "the O-Museum in Nagano and the 21st Century Muscum of Contemporarry Art in Kanazawa." The Ogasawara Museum was one of their first projects together.

The De Kunstline Theater and Cultural Center in Almere, the Netherlands, and a more recent Rolex Learning Center in Lausanne, Switzerland are also major projects of SANAA. Other works in Japan include the Naoshima Ferry Terminal and the Christian Dior Building in Tokyo.

In Essen, Germany, in 2006, the Zollverein School of Management and Design was inaugurated in a new building designed by SANAA on an historical coal mining site.

The Serpentine Pavilion in London, their first built project in the United Kingdom, was in place for three months on the gallery's lawn — the ninth such commission in the Serpentine's series of pavilions. In France, a branch of the Louvre Museum in Lens will comprise some 300,000 square feet of construction.

In Valencia, Spain, SANAA provided a unique expansion solution to IVAM (Valencian Institute of Modern Art) in which their existing building housing eight galleries will be completely enclosed by a translucent skin covering an entire block, and thus creating new indoor/outdoor public spaces between the building and the skin. The proposed skin is a light weight perforated metal that allows daylight, wind and rain to pass through. Construction has not yet begun.

Both architects have extensive lists of completed works and projects as individual architects.



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