Pritzker Prize 2010 winner – Architects Ryue Nishizawa, Kazuyo Sejima SANAA

The Pritzker committee made history by naming Ryue Nishizawa and Kazuyo Sejima as recipients of the 2010 Pritzker Architecture Prize

It’s only the second time that the award has gone to a woman, the second time the award has gone to a duo, and   the first-ever award for a male-female duo.

“For architecture that is simultaneously delicate and powerful, precise and fluid, ingenious but not overly or overtly clever,” reads the jury citation. “For the creation of buildings that successfully interact with their contexts and the activities they contain, creating a sense of fullness and experiential richness; for a singular architectural language that springs from a collaborative process that is both unique and inspirational; for their notable completed buildings and the promise of new projects together, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa are the recipients of the 2010 Pritzker Architecture Prize.”

The duo will receive the prize at a ceremony on Ellis Island, New York on 17 May 2010. They will receive bronze medallions and a US$100,000 grant at the ceremony.

The Japanese Sejima and Nishizawa, who practice under the name SANAA, have worked together since 1995. They are probably best known for their New Museum of Contemporary Art building on the Bowery in New York City, a stacked, wire-mesh wrapped sculpture that nodded to its in-transition surroundings.

Their biggest major building was just completed in Switzerland, the undulating concrete planes of the Rolex Learning Center which appear to rise naturally out of the site.

The Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art opened in 2006 and features hundreds of curved glass panels that make up most of the exterior and interior walls.

More glass wraps the circular 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan, which has no front or back, making for a truly accessible, public building.

A cube with seemingly-random punched-out windows that flood the interiors with light created a landmark structure for the Zollverein School for Management and Design in Germany.