Kazuyo Sejima was born in 1956 in Ibaraki, Japan. The daughter of a housewife and an industrial engineer, Kazuyo’s parents wanted her to follow her own professional path with total freedom, without restrictions or ties of any kind.
Sejima knew she wanted to be an architect from the first day she came across a magazine her parents had bought in search of inspiration for their family home. The magazine featured a photograph of Kiyonori Kikutake’s Sky House, the volumes of which made such an impression on her that she immediately knew she wanted to pursue a career in architecture.
The sketches of houses that Sejima had done when she was eight years old gave way to the projects she had to do at university. It was during her student years that the architect discovered that the house was only a starting point for the design of the ensemble, at a time when men were in the majority in the classroom, and it was not yet conceivable that a female architect could manage her professional career on a large scale.
A lover of beauty
Sejima’s first professional experience was as an intern with architect Toyo Ito, with whom she worked until 1987, when she set up her own studio: Kazuyo Sejima & Associates. Five years later, she was named Young Japanese Architect of the Year by the Japan Institute of Architects, which encouraged her to found the Tokyo-based joint practice Sejima and Nishizawa and Associates, SANAA, with her collaborator Ryue Nishizawa in 1995. This was the origin of an architectural practice oriented towards large international projects, although without ever losing sight of smaller projects.
«What I’d never do is stop designing houses to only design large buildings, because every time you build a house, you measure yourself. All the houses I’ve built illustrate my architectural biography, my evolution as an architect,» she stated in an interview.
Despite having won more than 15 international awards, including the 2010 Pritzker Architecture Prize, Sejima still considers herself a simple person, a lover of beauty. «I’m a person who needs flowers and trees around me. That’s why I have a small garden with four trees: a lemon tree, an apple tree, a blueberry tree and a Chinese orange tree, all within three metres of each other,» she says. As for her taste for beauty, the architect says: «I like to shop. Sometimes I make outfits that I’ll never wear, but I buy clothes to look at them. I take them out of the wardrobe and just look at them».
Works with soul
The SANAA architectural studio has left a legacy of projects that are recognised all over the world. From the extension to the Valencian Institute of Modern Art in Valencia, to the Christian Dior building in Tokyo, the Kanazawa Museum of Contemporary Art, the new Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, and the Rolex Learning Centre in Lausanne, Switzerland, among others.
A tireless worker, Kazuyo Sejima’s work has transcended borders to become part of the urban landscape of various countries, in turn inspiring younger architects. She is a member of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, a programme that connects great artists with young talent, in an experience of mutual learning and professional collaboration.
Always in search of space through ethereal forms, Sejima experiments with boundaries and materials. Her architecture aims to find the common denominator between the material and the abstract, because she understands design as a continuous process of discovery. And this may well be what gives her work its soul.
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