Japanese architect Riken Yamamoto, a passionate advocate for community bonds in urban design, has received the 2024 Pritzker Prize. The jury notes that, in architecture as in democracy, spaces should be shaped by the will of the people.
Yamamoto, born in Beijing in 1945 and based in Yokohama since the end of World War II, draws a link between the public and the private. He rejects shrinking housing to a mere commodity detached from neighbors, according to the statement from architecture’s highest prize. His housing projects incorporate relational elements to ensure that even residents who live alone do not feel isolated.
He connects cultures, stories, and generations with sensitivity, blending international influence and modernism to inspire harmonious societies despite diverse identities, economies, politics, infrastructures, and housing systems, asserts the award. The decision was announced by a jury led by Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena, a 2016 laureate.
To Yamamoto, recognizing space means recognizing an entire community. He notes that contemporary architectural practice overly emphasizes privacy and overlooks social relationships. Yet it is possible to honor individual freedom while living together in an architectural space that acts as a republic, fostering cultural harmony and life stages in balance.
For him, community members should care for one another. He describes a community as sharing a space that deconstructs traditional notions of freedom and privacy, while architecture must respond to future needs so life can flourish.
With these principles, his work blends the influences of traditional Japanese machiya houses and Greek oikos concepts, where connections and commerce were essential to a family’s vitality.
In his projects, he creates a threshold between public life and private life, providing abundant venues for commitments and casual encounters. He emphasizes transparency so those inside can experience what lies beyond, while passersby can sense a sense of belonging. He also seeks to maintain a consistent landscape continuity by contextually weaving natural and built surroundings into each building experience.
Some of his works
These ideas manifest in his own home, Gazebo (Yokohama, Japan 1986), designed to encourage neighbor interaction through terraces and rooftops, as well as in Ishii House (Kawasaki, Japan 1978), built for two artists. It features a pavilion-like living room that extends outdoors and serves as a stage for performances, while housing is integrated beneath.
Pangyo Housing in Seongnam, South Korea (2010) is a nine-block low-rise complex designed with non-prescriptive transparent ground-floor volumes that catalyze neighbor interconnections.
A second-floor community terrace promotes interaction, with meeting spaces, playgrounds, gardens, and bridges linking blocks of housing.
The Pritzker Prize remains the most prestigious award in architecture. It honors a living architect whose built work has made consistent and meaningful contributions to humanity through the art of architecture, as described by the organization, which recognizes people rather than firms.
Yamamoto is the 53rd laureate of the prize, the ninth Japanese recipient, and will receive the award in the spring in Chicago, home to the Hyatt Foundation, which administers the Pritzker Prize. Last year’s laureate was British architect David Chipperfield.