A Lightness of Being

Suchitra Deep spoke to Kazuyo Sejima about SANAA’s work and also her own journey as a woman in the profession. Kazuyo Sejima is associated with SANAA, the acclaimed Tokyo based practice where Sejima is a partner with Ryue Nishizawa. They were awarded the Pritzker prize in 2010, when they received international identity due to this notable achievement.

- Sanaa

Kazuyo Sejima was in Bangalore on the invitation of MASA (Malnad Architecture School Alumni) to talk about her work at SANAA, the acclaimed Tokyo based practice where Sejima is a partner with Ryue Nishizawa. Although SANAA had been steadily making inroads within their country, they became internationally known when they were awarded the Pritzker prize in 2010. The Pritzker sometimes referred to as the Nobel Prize for architecture, has been awarded to just one woman before Sejima since its inception when Zaha Hadid won it in 2004. Architecture is a notoriously male dominated field, and the higher one climbs, the fewer the number of women one finds. Perhaps this is one reason that most awards in architecture seem to go to men. Given that, for Sejima to ‘make it’ in architecture, and so impressively, is not a small achievement.

SANAA (acronym for Sejima and Nishizawa Associates) was founded in 1995 when Sejima invited Nishizawa to become a partner in her firm. Since then they have worked on many projects both inside Japan and increasingly now, in other parts of the world. The firm is unique in the manner that they operate as a practice. Alongside their combined work in SANAA, both Sejima and Nishizawa also work independently on their own commissions within the office, and these individual projects operate on very different scales.

Sejima has designed houses on plots less than a thousand square feet in size, while a project like the River building at Grace Farms has 80 acres to spread out on. This diversity brings richness to their cerebration and an attitude of openness to work outside the envelope.