Ryue Nishizawa, Usui-gun, Gunma, Japan, 1997
OfHouses presents “Pritzkers’ First Houses”: In 2010 the Pritzker Prize was awarded to both Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa. What is peculiar in their case is that they still maintain individual offices, besides being equal partners in SANAA: RN: In 1995 I tried to quit working in the Sejima office, and establish my own office… KS: But I did not want him to leave (laughter). So I proposed to start a collaborating office together as well as the new Nishizawa office. RN: I thought about it a little, but in the end I accepted. So we started SANAA in the summer of 1995, and I established my own office in 1997. Nishizawa’s first commission that he carried out on his own was a little weekend house in an isolated mountainous area near Tokyo. The house needed to be completely closed down because of security reasons, but with the possibility of temporary opening it up to the surroundings. Three light courts were inserted in the simple volume of the house; full height doors negotiate the degree of their openness to the outside. An ever changing interior atmosphere is created with very simple means. (Photos: © Hiso Suzuki, Erhard Pfeiffer. Source: Detail 02/1999; El Croquis 99/2000; architecturaldigest.com.)
