Kazuyo Sejima named Jane Drew Prize and Phyllis Lambert named Ada Louise Huxtable Prize

Kazuyo Sejima. Architect. Born 1956 in Ibaraki prefecture, Japan. Master’s in Architecture, Japan Women’s University in 1981. Worked in office of Toyo Ito before founding her own studio in Tokyo, Kazuyo Sejima and Associates in 1987. Founded SANAA with Ryue Nishizawa in 1995. She is currently a professor at the Polytechnic University of Milan, a visiting professor at Japan Women’s University and Osaka University of Arts, an Emeritus Professor at Yokohama National University, and Director of Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum.

Her own works include House in Plum Grove, Inujima “Art House Project,” and Japan Women’s University Mejiro Campus. SANAA’s main works include the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, the Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art; the De Kunstlinie Theater and Cultural Center in Almere, the Rolex Learning Center, LouvreLens Museum, Grace Farms, Bocconi University New Urban Campus, La Samaritaine, Art Gallery of New South Wales Expansion — Naala Badu Building, and Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building W18, Cambridge, USA, 2024. 

In 2010, Kazuyo Sejima was appointed director of the 12th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. 

Awards won by SANAA include the Arnold Brunner Memorial Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2002), the Golden Lion at the 9th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale (2004), a design prize from the Architectural Institute of Japan (2006), the Kunstpreis Berlin from the Berlin Academy of Arts (2007), and the Pritzker Architecture Prize (2010). Japan Architecture Award, Rolf Schock Prize in Category of Visual Arts, Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Prix de l’Équerre d’Argent, the Medal with Purple Ribbon, Thomas Jefferson Medal, Praemium Imperiale, and the 2025 Royal Gold Medal by the Royal Institute of British Architects. 

Phyllis Lambert (born January 24, 1927 in Montreal) is an architect, author, scholar, and activist, and is the Founding Director Emeritus and formerly Director and Chair of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) which she established in Montreal in 1979.

Lambert first made architectural history as the Director of Planning of the Seagram Building (1954-58) in New York City. Actively engaged in advancing contemporary architecture, as well as the social issues of urban conservation, Lambert founded Héritage Montréal in 1975, and in 1979 was instrumental in establishing the Société d'Amélioration de Milton-Parc, the largest non-profit cooperative housing renovation project in Canada. In 1996, she formed the Fonds d’Investissement de Montréal (FIM), the only private investment fund in Canada participating in the revitalization of housing in low- and medium-income neighbourhoods. For 23 years, Lambert served on the Board of the Vieux Port de Montréal, where she established public consultation as an instrument of planning. Spearheading the revival of Montréal’s downtown west quarter through the roundtable she initiated in 2005, Lambert’s involvement in shaping the city continues also through the Institute of Policy Alternatives of Montréal (IPAM) which she presides. For her tenacious engagement in advancing the role of architecture in the public realm, from Seagram to the CCA, Lambert received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale. In 2016, the Wolf Foundation in Israel bestowed upon Lambert its Wolf Prize in Arts for her six decades of championing innovation in building design and preservation of properties of patrimonial significance, and for invigorating the profession and research into architecture, which she infuses with intellectual doubt and political critique.  Last year, she also received the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize 2016 Architecture Awards from The American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York.