SANAA Biography & Bibliography

SANAA (Sejima and Nishizawa and Associates) is a multiple award-winning architectural firm based in Tokyo, Japan. SANAA designs highly aesthetic and experimental buildings in Japan, Europe, and the USA. The white, ethereal architecture of SANAA has, to many people, become synonymous with contemporary Japanese architecture. It was founded in 1995 by two Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima (妹島 和世 1956-) and Ryue Nishizawa (西沢立衛 1966-), a former employee at Kazuyo Sejima and Associates. In 1997, Ryue Nishizawa also founded his own office, Ryue Nishizawa and Associates, and to this day, both architects work on individual projects outside of SANAA. In 2010, Sejima and Nishizawa were awarded the Pritzker Prize.

SANAAs work includes a large number of successful public buildings, such as the New Museum and the Rolex Learning Center, the Toledo Museum of Art’s Glass Pavilion in Toledo, Ohio, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, NY; the Serpentine Pavilion in London; the Christian Dior Building in Omotesando in Tokyo; the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa; and the Louvre-Lens Museum in France. The architects also experiment with housing designs to shape and change our daily life, especially in their individual practices (see, for example, Tokyo’s Garden & House).