In August of this year, the 33rd Praemium Imperiale (Takamatsu Palace Shimo Memorial World Culture Award) was announced, and the winners in the category of architecture were Japanese architects Kazuyo Seijima and Ryue Nishizawa. The award was established in 1988 by the Japan Art Association in memory of Prince Seinin Takamatsugu, who had passed away the previous year (1987). The awards are divided into five categories: "Painting," "Sculpture," "Architecture," "Music," and "Theater/Film. The five categories of "Theater/Cinema" are awarded annually to honor those who have made a concrete impact on the field of art and design and have contributed greatly to the enrichment of world culture.

For the architectural community, Kazuyo Seijima and Ryue Nishizawa are two names that cannot be ignored. Back in 2010, Kazuyo Seijima and Ryue Nishizawa were awarded the Pritzker Prize, the highest award in architecture. At that time, their work gave the city a new reality: quiet, hazy, or transparent facades; white and holy interiors; pure and intuitive spatial divisions; light and airy structures; scattered and poetic movement lines; and precise control of scale between walks - these architectural languages constitute their complete design philosophy. Only those who have done architectural practice understand the effort and solidity required to implement these few words in the projects. It is not that no one in the same profession, whether a predecessor or a latecomer, has ever tried it. It is rare to see such a complete, thorough and extreme play.

In 2004, they designed the 21st Century Museum of Art in Kanazawa, which aptly embodies the beauty of restraint in the midst of rapid development. The project, which arose from the development of the Shinkansen and the revitalization of tourism, is a flat, four-sided plot of land in a small town, surrounded by a series of ordinary buildings of varying character, fortunately still with a bit of greenery. So, Seijima and Nishizawa drew a circle in the plot. After this highly spiritual and ritualistic stroke, each function was broken down into several pieces and piled up inside the circle. The simple and scrawled planes of a child's drawing can be felt in the physical space, but the freedom of movement and the organic connection between functions can be felt. Architecture is the art of single point perspective. As we move between galleries, the view of the outdoors fills the gaps between the blocks through a 360 degree glass curtain wall. Every step has an exquisite composition, a written start, and a precise control.

The project won the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Biennale immediately after completion. Many people have analyzed the divine drawing of the circle on the level of history, philosophy, religion, and the nature of human construction behavior, but they have ignored the essential difference. The previously drawn circle was a circle of land, in order to form a new space. The circles of Seijima and Nishizawa take advantage of advances in engineering to achieve a unified, holistic aesthetic: smooth seams, curved glass, low eaves, thin roofs and slender structural supports ...... all for the sake of an "emptiness". The construction of a circular spiritual field, the concept of the "field" that many later became enamored of. At a time when everyone was frantically accelerating, the architect and the museum together questioned the critique of consumerism and the supremacy of production, and called for a return to spirituality and emotion.

The same white block then appeared in a very different guise in downtown New York, and the 2007 Museum of Contemporary Art in New York further expressed the two men's attitude, pushing to the forefront the concern for the relationship between people, architecture and the city. Manhattan has never been a welcoming and friendly gesture to architects who highlight their artistry, and must either be confronted with a more powerful hostility or swallowed up by it. Without the floating "circle of spirit" and "circle of protection", faced with the noisy, cramped and powerful urban environment, and the world-renowned complex and strict design codes, Seijima and Nishizawa began to deconstruct the square boxes that make up the urban fabric of Manhattan, splitting them into Six square boxes of varying heights were created to accommodate the different functional needs of the museum. The deconstructed buildings were stacked on top of each other to create a sense of uncertainty. With this adjustment, the building takes on a slightly unsettling but more open stance. The pure white perforated aluminum mesh covers the entire skin, with a few shadows of glass, bringing a hazy and ambiguous atmosphere to the city. This deconstruction is ambitious, attempting to "dismantle" this capital city from its fundamental logic, but with an emphasis on "weakening" and "reconciliation". Most of the time, architects are the companions of power and capital. It is a rare quality for a young Japanese architect to be given the right to design such an important cultural project in New York, but to calmly and firmly express his long-held ideas and aesthetics, echoing the environment without being coerced by it.

Seijima was born in 1956 and Nishizawa in 1966, exactly 10 years apart, and they both studied under the famous architect Toyo Ito. Although they each had their own offices and usually worked independently, they often joined forces to design together, an open and free working model that continues to this day. After receiving the Pritzker Prize, one of the most highly recognized awards in the West, the duo became more cautious and daring in their choice of projects, wanting to devote themselves more to the exploration of local cultural traces and localities, being cautious about the commercial aspects of architecture and daring about the social and artistic aspects of architecture.

In 2010, the Seto Inland Sea Art Project was opened, and they devoted themselves to the sensational art revitalization of the countryside, starting their creation in Toshima and Inujima for several years. Whether it was budget or construction conditions, pushing themselves into more restrictive conditions for more than a decade, this project was the ultimate idealistic thing to do for an architect's career plan, where the effort far outweighed the gain.

There are several small islands in the Seto Inland Sea, which used to be an important place for quarrying in Japan. Among them, Seijima Island decayed from a large city of 5,000 people in 1900 to only 50 residents in the whole area in 2021, and the average age is over 80 years old. Unlike the 21st Century Museum of Art in Kanazawa, which began to be designed for future development at the end of the last century, art and architecture are at this moment confronted with the life and death of a town. This is a conscious intervention, a cultural intervention, initiated by the so-called elite intellectuals against the centralization of power due to capital and free market practices.

Initially, Seijima looked at the island through the eyes of a conceptual plan and chose to renovate three spots with old houses. Yet when she presented her work at the opening, she felt that it was all pointless. The architecture here pales in comparison, not forming a language that creates any substantial dialogue with the history and the environment. She began to think about how the mission of the "architect" is to connect and build the whole village as a single building, which is composed of physical space, spiritual space, cultural lineage, people and time in history. This is something that is easy to say, but nebulous to do, and without any reference to the concept. Therefore, Maida starts again as an "architect" in a broad sense, penetrating into the social fabric to extend vertically, establishing new interactions between people and places and people through a series of activities, artworks, spatial improvements, agricultural operations, etc., in an attempt to touch the most fundamental issues. Everything runs in a highly abstracted way of thinking, and Seijima Gallery has become her biggest and longest spanning experiment. The margins and methodological resonance between architecture and philosophy in deconstructionism have long been explored in the book "Architecture as Metaphor" by Pedestri Koshitani. Little did I know that 40 years later here and in this scene, I would let Seijima begin to practice through such a project.

Also responding to the environment, the Louvre's Reims branch designed by Kazuyo Seijima and Ryue Nishizawa seems much more relaxed. When it comes to the Seijima Gallery, it is hard not to compare these two projects. The international competition for the Lanxess branch began in 2005 and construction began in 2009, in the same abandoned mine site, in a remote suburban area in desperate need of economic revitalization. The duo's design is a clear and coherent one, continuing the shape of the site itself, deconstructing four rectangular and one large square pavilion, coherent but scattered among the site, with a total length of nearly 400 meters and only one floor, with low eaves and polished aluminum finishes that allow the building to disappear into its environment. Pure, airy, elegant and slender, this is the SANAA style we are familiar with. From Lance to Seijima, what has changed may be a series of changes in construction conditions such as time, era, operation and budget, but more than that, it is Seijima's understanding of the role of architect and care for its own local culture.

Architecture and urban development are inseparable from the behavior of human economy and politics, and are socialized products in the absolute sense. People's expectations of social and economic order are constantly projected onto architecture. Seijima and Nishizawa are more like thinkers, examining this society. Architecture becomes a tool, a weapon, a medium, rather than an end in itself. They wield romance and boldly release it in the midst of depression. Looking back at the purity and romance in their works over the past 20 years, they can still bring the power of clarity and see a more possible "utopian" future.

Article Source:艺术与设计

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