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Riken Yamamoto is the winner of the 2024 Pritzker Architecture Prize. Yamamoto is the 53rd recipient of this annual award and the ninth Japanese architect to receive this honor.
The architect’s work spans a range of building types, from private residences and cultural projects to small-scale community contributions. His work is deeply rooted in interaction with the community. In a world where people often experience isolation and separation from community, Yamamoto defined the design concept as “the feeling of sharing a space.”
Yamamoto was born in Beijing and now lives and practices in Yokohama, Japan. He studied architecture at Nihon University in Japan and now teaches there. The architect’s work can be found in Japan, China, Korea and Switzerland.
“To me, getting to know a space is getting to know the entire community,” Yamamoto said in a press release. “Current architectural methods emphasize privacy and deny the need for social relationships. However, we can still respect the freedom of everyone while living together as a republic in built spaces, promoting harmony across cultures and life stages.”
This move away from privacy is used in many works, including the design of his own home, GAZEBO, which features a series of terraces and roofs to promote interaction between neighbors. This connection with the outdoors and the fusion of private and public spaces can also be seen in his large-scale residential project Hotakubo Housing. In school projects such as Saitama Prefectural University (1999) and Koyasu Elementary School (2018), architects create spaces for people to interact with outdoor walkways, interconnecting staircases and ascending platforms.
His first project was a private residence located in the forest. In Shanchuan Villa (1977), an open-air terrace invites an interaction between the forest landscape and the wooden structure.
Alejandro Aravena, chairman of the Pritzker Prize and 2016 Pritzker Prize winner, noted the community-rooted spirit of Yamamoto Architecture’s contribution: “The one thing that cities of the future need most It’s about creating conditions through architecture that increase opportunities for people to come together and interact. By carefully blurring the lines between public and private, Yamamoto makes a positive contribution to the community beyond the brief.”
In the citation, the jury described Yamamoto’s approach to design and the impact of his work on people and the environment:
“Throughout his long, coherent and rigorous career, Riken Yamamoto has succeeded in designing buildings as both the backdrop and foreground of everyday life, blurring the lines between public and private dimensions, and adding to the mix through precise, rational design strategies. Provides opportunities for people to meet spontaneously.
His aim was to dignify, enhance and enrich the lives of individuals (from children to the elderly) and their social relationships through the solid, consistent quality of his buildings. He did this through an architecture that was self-explanatory yet modest and cogent, with structural honesty and precise proportions and careful attention to the surrounding landscape. “
The Pritzker Prize jury consists of several prominent architectural and cultural figures: Alejandro Aravena; Barry Bergdoll, architectural historian and educator; Deborah Berke, architect, dean of the Yale School of Architecture; Stephen Breyer, justice of the United States Supreme Court; André Aranha Corrêa do Lago, architecture critic and Minister of Climate, Energy and Environment of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Brazilian government; Kazuyo Sejima, architect , 2010 Pritzker Prize winner; Wang Shu, architect, educator, 2012 Pritzker Prize winner; and Manuela Luca Dazio.
Before Yamamoto won the award, David Chipperfield won the award in 2023 and Diébédo Francis Kéré won the award in 2022.
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