VIENNA.- The Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation announced that Junya Ishigami has been awarded the Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts, one of the most highly endowed international prizes in this field.

Born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1974, Junya Ishigami is one of the most exceptional talents on the international architecture scene. After spending many years in the office of the Pritzker Prize laureate Kazuyo Sejima, SANAA, he established his own firm, junya.ishigami+associates, in 2004. The uniqueness of his work and the unconventional way in which he approaches his projects led to swift recognition and the award of many prizes. In 2009, he became the youngest ever recipient of the Architectural Institute of Japan Prize; in 2010, he received the Golden Lion of the Architecture Biennale in Venice; and in 2019 he was the first winner of the newly created Obel Award. He has taught at Tohoku University in Japan since 2010 and was appointed Kenzo Tange Design Critic at Harvard Graduate School of Design (USA) in 2014.

For Ishigami, architecture is an open field of infinite possibilities that extends into every area of life, raises all the essential questions, and should be considered from a perspective that is as scientific as it is artistic. Apparently liberated from the rules and constraints of architecture, Ishigami predominantly finds the context for his projects in nature. And he has a continuing focus on the reinterpretation of the boundary between landscape and architecture. His conceptual thinking is shaped by an urge to interweave architecture with the “natural” and to stretch the existing frontiers between design, architecture, and the environment. With his visionary designs, whose aesthetic is characterized by their concentration, transparency, and simplicity, Ishigami is embarking upon a holistic search for an architecture for the future, in which the life of society is structured according to organic principles.

Ishigami’s major projects include KAIT Workshop for the Kanagawa Institute of Technology (Atsugi, Japan, 2008); the House of Peace in Copenhagen (2014); the Chapel of the Valley in Shandong (China, 2016); the Art Biotop Water Garden (Tochigi/Japan, 2018); and his pavilion for the Serpentine Gallery (London, 2019).

I am honoured to receive the esteemed Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts, and want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to the Foundation and the jury. This acknowledgment inspires me to continue pushing the boundaries of architecture in the pursuit of excellence, says Junya Ishigami in a first statement.