Japanese architect and social advocate, Riken Yamamoto, has been selected as the 2024 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate.
Succeeding David Chipperfield in 2023, Francis Kéré in 2022, and Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal in 2021, Yamamoto will receive the Pritzker Prize during the 46th Pritzker Prize ceremony in Chicago this spring, and the 2024 Laureate Lecture will be held at S.R. Crown Hall, Illinois Institute of Technology, in partnership with the Chicago Architecture Center, on May 16th.
Born in Beijing, People’s Republic of China, in 1945, Riken Yamamoto relocated to Yokohama, Japan, shortly after the end of World War II, where he currently still resides. His first experience with architecture occurred at age 17 when he visited the Kôfuku-ji Temple in Nara, Japan, originally built in 730 and reconstructed in 1426, and was captivated by "the wooden tower illuminated by the light of the moon." He graduated from Nihon University, Department of Architecture, College of Science and Technology in 1968 and received a Master of Arts in Architecture from Tokyo University of the Arts, Faculty of Architecture in 1971. In 1973, he founded his practice, Riken Yamamoto & Field Shop.
Yamamoto's first social housing project, Hotakubo Housing in Kumamoto, Japan, comprises 110 houses arranged around a tree-lined central plaza.
Known for establishing a "kinship between public and private realms" and creating "architecture as background and foreground to everyday life," Yamamoto is the 53rd honoree of the Pritzker Architecture Prize and the ninth architect from Japan to receive this recognition, following Arata Isozaki, Shigeru Ban, Kazuyo Sejima, Ryue Nishizawa, Kenzō Tange, Fumihiko Maki, Toyo Ito and Tadao Ando.
The Pritzker Prize is conferred in acknowledgment of those qualities of talent, vision, and commitment, which have persistently produced significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture. In his long, coherent, rigorous career, Riken Yamamoto has managed to produce architecture both as background and foreground to everyday life, blurring boundaries between its public and private dimensions, and multiplying opportunities for people to meet spontaneously, through precise, rational design strategies.
"For me, the current architectural approach emphasizes privacy, negating the necessity of social relationships. However, we can still honor the freedom of each individual while living together in the architectural space, fostering harmony between cultures and phases of life,” commented Yamamoto.
