What the work is
Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa founded SANAA in Tokyo in 1995. Their collaborative work includes the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, the New Museum in New York and the Rolex Learning Center in Lausanne.
How it was made
The practice developed commissions across museums, education, retail and public space. Those programmes provide a useful basis for comparison: each project must organise different activities, collections or movements through a building.
What works
Studying the partnership through several built works avoids reducing it to one signature image. Compare the Kanazawa museum and the learning centre as different answers to questions of access, circulation and shared space.
What does not
The practice’s project list includes proposals as well as completed buildings. An unbuilt scheme cannot supply evidence of actual occupation, and the partners’ separate projects should not automatically be attributed to SANAA.
What it influenced
Sejima and Nishizawa received the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2010, following recognition at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2004. These awards document the professional reception of their work.
Is it worth your time
Worth studying as a collaborative practice. Begin with two completed buildings and examine plans, sections and use together; the comparison is more informative than treating every project as an instance of a single aesthetic label.
