On the occasion of the Olympic Games in Tokyo 2020 (which are held in 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic), we make a compilation of projects from a Japanese architectural studio, SANAA. An internationally recognized studio.

The SANAA studio, founded by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, is one of the most influential Japanese studios in contemporary architecture. Their architecture is unmistakable, they have been able to adapt that oriental style to western tastes defining a new architectural language that also plays with light and perception above all.

One of its objectives is to create buildings in which the structure is a means of connection between users and the environment, making proposals with a great aesthetic and engineering weight.

In this article we will compile 12 works from the SANAA studio that have great architectural value. Among these 12 buildings are: Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2009, Shibaura House, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Louvre Lens Museum, Production Hall at Vitra Campus, Home-for-All at Tsukihama, Grace Farms, Zollverein School of Design, Naoshima Harbour Pavilion, Tsuruoka Cultural Center, House in Los Vilos and Sumida Hokusai Museum.
 
We present a selection of 12 architectural works by SANAA, from its beginnings to the present day, including projects that have been made separately and buildings that have been designed as a joint studio.

Kensington Gardens, London, United Kingdom.

The 2009 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion was located in Kensington Gardens, UK. In 2009, the Serpentine Gallery invited the internationally known SANAA studio, which had never built anything in the UK before, to design a temporary pavilion for public activities in the UK between June and October of that year.

The pavilion is composed of a very thin corrugated aluminium roof, which rests on a system of columns of a very small diameter, also made of aluminium, in this way a series of connected spaces is provided that in addition the park is reflected in the aluminium which creates a continuity between pavilion and environment.

Grace Farms, New Canaan, USA.

The River is a winding building, as its name indicates: it has the shape of "River", is located in Grace Farms, New Canaan in the United States and was designed by the studio SANAA. This building, like most SANAA projects, aims to blend in with the surroundings without drawing attention to the architecture.

This building houses different functions thanks to a series of interior and exterior spaces lower that large sinuous roof. This occupies 32 hectares by the rural area of New Canaan and has an organic shape, the roof supported by fine pillars for the outdoor area and for the interior, glazed areas.
 

3 Chome-15-4 Shibaura, Minato City, Tokyo 108-0023, Japan.

Shibaura House is located in the Shibaura district, an area in which office buildings are very numerous. SANAA studio located this building on a corner plot, this building is designed to unite office programs (business area) and cultural center, offering flexible spaces to develop parallel activities such as workshops, artistic and leisure activities.

This building offers 1,000 sqm divided into 7 floors, from the first mezzanine there is access to a patio that has a staircase that connects with the upper floors, being serpenteante is creating a visual tour throughout the building. As for the structure, there is a concrete inner core dedicated to elevators, and on the perimeter you can see a metal network of pillars, The facade is a glass curtain wall.

4. The New Tsuruoka Cultural Hall


11-61 Babacho, Tsuruoka, Yamagata 997-0035, Japan.

The Cultural Center is located in the city of Tsuruoka in Japan designed by the Japanese studio SANAA. The studio sought to enhance local cultural and artistic activities through a multi-purpose room. The building is in harmony with the adjacent historic building and the landscape.

The exterior of the building is a set of several decks of a small size. Each deck becomes lower the closer it is to the perimeter until it reaches a height of a one-storey building, thus controlling its volume.

5. The Sumida Hokusai Museum


2 Chome-7-2 Kamezawa, Sumida City, Tokyo 130-0014, Japan.

The Sumida Kokusai Museum is located in a small park in the homonymous district of the Japanese capital, Tokyo. This building designed by SANAA harmonizes perfectly in terms of the urban aspect in the district and adapts to the scale of the environment.

The SANAA’s programme for the museum is strategically organized in this volume, ranging from fixed exhibition spaces to a library or shop. The material used for its coating is polished aluminium. The characteristics of this material allow the urban landscape that surrounds it to be reflected in it.

6. Musée Louvre-Lens


99 Rue Paul Bert, 62300 Lens, France.

The Louvre Lens Museum is located in the city of Lens in the Pas de Calais region of northern France and was a work designed by the SANAA studio with the help of landscapers to create a relationship and dialogue between the museum and the surrounding landscape environment.

SANAA did not want to project a large dominant wall in the environment, but a low and easily accessible structure integrating into the environment. The museum is composed of five steel and glass buildings joined together. The facades are made of polished aluminium to reflect the park, creating a continuity between museum and park, and the roofs are made of glass for the entrance of light.

7. The Zollverein School of Management and Design


Gelsenkirchener Str. 209, 45309 Essen, Germany.

On the main access road to the former Zeche Zollverein mine in Essen, Germany is located the Zollverein School of Administration and Design which was designed by the architecture firm SANAA. This studio won a competition to build the new school in 2002.

The volume of this building is an almost perfect cube, it has 3 unique fixed cores of different sizes and 2 metal pillars that cross the slab. It is transparent and with lots of windows that make this building almost transparent. The program of the school is spread over the 4 floors that make up this building.


8. Factory Building on the Vitra Campus


Vitra Campus, Weil am Rhein, Germany.

This project, the Factory Building designed by SANAA is located at Vitra Campus, Weil am Rhein in Germany. It is a building that has a rounded shape but not entirely circular. This way makes the logistics process easier, as the interior space is sufficient for the internal movement of trucks.

The most characteristic feature of this work is the lightness of its architecture, it eliminates everything that is not essential, the reduction to a point in which the architecture and the structure allow to see the program. The interior of the warehouse is divided into zones, the first the north zone, is a high-rise warehouse, another in the center, assembly area and finally the south zone, which is the collection warehouse.
 
9. 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art


1 Chome-2-1 Hirosaka, Kanazawa, Ishikawa 920-8509, Japan.

The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art (21CM) is located in Kanazawa, on the west coast of Japan. The museum is located in the city centre which is surrounded by the City Hall and also the Kenrokuen Gardens. It was opened in 2004.

Its circular structure of 112.5 meters in diameter is one of the most important works of SANAA. Architects play with light and reflections very easily, creating abstract landscapes. The museum is a composition of boxes connected by a circular cover, this makes the circulation of the museum a unique experience.
 
10. New Naoshima Port Pavilion


Honmura, Naoshima Island, Japan.

The Port Terminal is a pavilion in Honmura, Naoshima Island in Japan designed by SANAA. It is a space that also serves to park the transport rented by visitors while visiting the Art House. The architects wanted it to be a meeting point of embarkation for those who visit the island for the first time.

It has a unique, three-dimensional shape 8 meters high, similar to a cloud. Its structure is made of wood and the spheres are semi-transparent FRP. This space is luminous thanks to the outer light that passes through the spheres.

Los Vilos, Chile.

"Los Vilos House" designed by the Japanese studio SANAA is located on the shores of the Pacific Ocean in Los Vilos, Chile. The configuration of this house agrees with the natural forms formed by the landscape.

In this project of SANAA, the most outstanding architectural element, and to which it is given more importance is the roof. The undulations of the same do not need to incorporate walls in the project, therefore different spaces are created dedicated to each area of the home. With respect to the materials, the concrete is used for the roof, which is supported by steel pillars and glass for the vertical enclosure.
 
12. Home-for-All in Tsukihama, Miyatojima


Tsukihama, Miyatojima, Japan.

In the Miyatojima Tsukihama district, which is a small town situated on difficult terrain, there is a small sandy beach very touristy for many Japanese. After the earthquake and tsunami that hit the east coast of Japan in 2011 it was wanted to recover all the beaches to attract visitors.

Thanks to the SANAA studio, which worked for free, a space was created, a place of rest open to the sea and that was multipurpose rest and work. This pavilion has a wavy roof that facilitated the integration with the entrno. This pavilion, Home-for-All, being a semi-outdoor space is ventilated in summer with southern winds, and in winter the northern winds are avoided thanks to its carpentry.

More information

Kazuyo Sejima (Ibaraki, Japan, 1956) and Ryue Nishizawa (Kanagawa, Japan, 1966) worked independently from each other before founding the SANAA Ltd. studio in 1995. Having studied architecture at the Japan Women’s University, Sejima went on to work for the renowned architect Toyo Ito. She set up her own studio in 1987 and in 1992 was proclaimed Young Architect of the Year in Japan. Nishizawa studied architecture at the Yokohama National University. In addition to his work with Sejima, he has had his own practice since 1997.

The studio has built several extraordinarily successful commercial and institutional buildings, civic centres, homes and museums both in Japan and elsewhere. These include the O Museum in Nagano (1999) and the N Museum in Wakayama (1997), the Day-Care Center in Yokohama (2000), the Prada Beauty Store in Tokyo and Hong Kong (2001), the Issey Miyake and Christian Dior Building in Tokyo (2003) and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa (2004). Sejima also designed the famous Small House in Tokyo (2000), the Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion, Toledo, Ohio (2001-2006), the extension to the Institut Valencia d’Art Modern, Valencia, Spain (2002 – ), the Zollverein School, Essen, Germany (2003-2006), the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2003-2007) and the Novartis Campus WSJ-157 Office Building, Basle, Switzerland (2003 – ).

In 2004 Sejima and Nishizawa were awarded the Golden Lion at the 9th Venice Architecture Biennale for their distinguished work on the Metamorph exhibition.

Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa have won the 2010 Pritzker Prize.

The 12th International Architecture Exhibition, was directed by Kazuyo Sejima, the first woman to direct the venice architecture biennale, since its inception in 1980.

   

Ryue Nishizawa and Kazuyo Sejima. Kazuyo Sejima

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Kazuyo Sejima. Architect. Born 1956 in Ibaraki prefecture, Japan. Master’s in Architecture, Japan Women’s University, 1981. Worked in office of Toyo Ito before founding Kazuyo Sejima and Associates in 1987. Founded SANAA with Ryue Nishizawa in 1995. 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). Works by SANAA include the Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art; the De Kunstlinie Theater and Cultural Center in Almere...

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Ryue Nishizawa. Architect. Born in 1966 in Tokyo. In 1990, he graduated from Yokohama Graduate School of Architecture, Yokohama National University, and joined Kazuyo Sejima & Associates. In 1995, he founded a firm named SANAA together with Kazuyo Sejima. He established Office of Ryue Nishizawa in 1997.  In 2001, he was appointed as Assistant Professor at Yokohama Graduate School of Architecture, Yokohama National University (Y-GSA), and has been a Y-GSA Professor since 2010.

His numerous awards include the Golden Lion Award of the 9th International Architecture Exhibition at the 2004 Venice Biennale of Architecture, and the 2010 Pritzker Architecture Prize.

His main works include: International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences (IAMAS) Multimedia Studio*, Weekend House, Dior Omotesando Store*, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa*, Moriyama House, House A, The Glass Pavilion of the Toledo Museum of Art*, Marine Station Naoshima*, Stadttheater Almer (De Kunstlinie)*, New Museum*, Towada Art Center, ROLEX Learning Center*, Teshima Art Museum. * SANAA design collaborated with Kazuyo Sejima.

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Published on: July 15, 2021
Cite: "12 extraordinary projects designed by Japanese studio SANAA" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/12-extraordinary-projects-designed-japanese-studio-sanaa> ISSN 1139-6415
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