Boundaries as spaces: The architecture of Riken Yamamoto, 2024 laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize

Transparency

See-through materials, porous walls, etc. may be utilised so that users inside spaces may experience the environment that lies beyond, while people passing by may feel a sense of belonging.

This is a strategy that Yamamoto has used for civic buildings, which achieve specific functions as well as affirm public purpose and assurance. For example, the Hiroshima Nishi Fire Station (Hiroshima, Japan, 2000), appears entirely transparent, with a glass louvered façade and interior glass walls. Visitors and passersby may view through to the central atrium to witness the daily activity and training of firefighters, and are encouraged to grow acquainted with the civil servants in the many designated public areas of the building.

Saitama Prefectural University (Koshigaya, Japan 1999), specializing in nursing and health sciences, is composed of nine buildings connected by terraces that transition into walkways leading to transparent volumes that allow views from one classroom to another, but also from one building to the next, encouraging interdisciplinary learning.

Such fellowship is fostered even within the youngest generations at Koyasu Elementary School (Yokohama, Japan 2018), which features generous, undivided terraces extending learning spaces, permitting sights into and from each classroom, and encouraging relationships amongst students across grades levels.

Embodying relations

Yamamoto has evolved influences from traditional Japanese machiya and Greek oikos housing that existed in relationship to cities, when connectivity and commerce were essential to the livelihoods of families.

He designed his own home, GAZEBO (Yokohama, Japan 1986) to invoke interaction with neighbours from terraces and rooftops. Ishii House (Kawasaki, Japan 1978), built for two artists, features a pavilion-like room that extends outdoors and serves as a stage to host performances, while living quarters are embedded beneath.

His larger housing projects further assure that even residents who live alone don’t dwell in isolation: Pangyo Housing (Seongnam, Republic of Korea 2010), a complex of nine low-rise housing blocks is designed with nonprescriptive transparent ground floor volumes that catalyse interaction between neighbours. A communal deck across the second floor features spaces for gathering, playgrounds, gardens and bridges that connect one housing block to another.

Continuity of landscape

Yamamoto’s designs do not stand apart, but rather ‘communicates’ with existing natural and built environments that contextualise the experience of each building.

For example, Fussa City Hall (Tokyo, Japan 2008) is conceived as two mid-rise towers, rather than one high-rise to compliment the surrounding neighbourhood of low-rise buildings. Concave bases invite visitors to recline and rest, while green public rooftop and lower levels are designated for flexible public programming.

THE CIRCLE at Zürich Airport (Switzerland, 2020) is conceived as “neither a nineteenth-century city nor a twentieth-century city intended for rational and economic ends but an entirely new city for the new lifestyles of the twenty-first century”, recreating the structure of a medieval city with new construction methods and a landscape-oriented design.

He considers the user experience first, designing Yokosuka Museum of Art (Yokosuka, Japan 2006) as both a destination for travellers and a daily reprieve for locals. While the inviting serpentine entrance evokes the surrounding Tokyo Bay and nearby mountains, many of the galleries are underground, providing those who approach with an undisturbed visual experience of the natural geography. Visitors may view through to the landscape and other galleries from round cutouts in all common spaces, uniting these otherwise distinctive environments so that those inside are impressed upon not only by the artwork, but by the activity of others in the spaces alongside them.