Born in Japan, in the prefecture of Ibaraki in 1956, Kazuyo Sejima is a leading exponent of contemporary architecture. In 1981, she took a degree in architecture at the Japan Women's University and began working in the studio of Toyo Ito. In 1987, she opened her own studio in Tokyo.

In 1995, together with Ryue Nishizawa, she founded SANAA, the Tokyo studio that has designed some of the most innovative works of architecture built recently around the world, from the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York to the Serpentine Pavilion in London and from the Christian Dior Building in Omotesando (Tokyo) to the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, which won the Golden Lion in 2004 for the most significant work of the 9th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. In 2000 she set up, together with Ryue Nishizawa, the Japanese Pavilion, named City of Girls, at the 7th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.

The recent Rolex Learning Center in Lausanne, Switzerland (March 2010) and a branch of the Louvre Museum in Lens (now under construction) are also major projects of SANAA.

 

Kazuyo Sejima has taught at Princeton University and at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. She is currently a lecturer at Keio University. On May 17th 2010 – together with Ryue Nishizawa - she was awarded the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize 2010 in New York. 

A constant focus on research characterises all of her work, heir to the thousand-year tradition that has inspired the minimalist geometry of contemporary Japanese architecture. Toyo Ito describes her as “an architect who uses the maximum simplicity to link the material and the abstract”.