Japanese architect Riken Yamamoto, 2024 Pritzker Prize

Japanese architect Riken Yamamoto won the 2024 Pritzker Prize this Tuesday, the jury says, “for reminding us that in architecture, like in democracy, space must be made for the will of the people.”

Born in China, although he soon moved to Japan, where he pursued his career, he is considered a great defender of community relations in urban planning. The jury highlights that his work aims “to raise awareness in the community about the responsibility of social demands, to question the discipline of architecture in order to calibrate each individual architectural response, and above all to inspire us in architecture. Important to remind.” In a democracy, places should be created by the will of the people.

“For me, recognizing a place is recognizing an entire community,” Yamamoto said in a statement to the awards organization. “Current architectural approaches emphasize privacy while denying the need for social interactions. However, we can still respect the freedom of each individual as we live together in one architectural space as a republic, promoting harmony between cultures and stages of life.

Yamamoto was born in 1945 in Beijing (People’s Republic of China) and moved to Yokohama (Japan) shortly after the end of World War II. He lived in a house that was built along the lines of a traditional Japanese machiya, with his mother’s pharmacy at the front and her living room at the back. This characteristic of the dialogue between public and private that he experienced in childhood marked his career.

Yamamoto’s father died when he was five years old. In some ways, he tried to emulate his father’s career as an engineer, but instead he pursued his own path in architecture.

His first experience with architecture occurred at the age of 17, as he himself stated. This happened when he visited the Kofuku-ji temple in Nara (Japan), and was fascinated by the five-story pagoda that symbolizes the five Buddhist elements: earth, water, fire, air and space. He graduated in 1968 and, after completing a master’s degree, founded his own studio, Riken Yamamoto & Field Shop, in 1973.

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