Ryue Nishizawa

Kazuyo Sejima (b. 1956, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan) and Ryue Nishizawa (b. 1966, Tokyo, Japan), founders of the Tokyo-based firm Sejima And Nishizawa Associated Architects (SANAA), are among the world's most prominent and influential architects.

In the early nineties, their names were still passed on as a 'secret tip' in select circles on account of their modest but extraordinarily innovative buildings. Since then, they have made their name as two of the most outstanding architects of the twenty-first century. They made the headlines with recent realisations such as the Dior Building in Tokyo (2003), the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa (Japan, 2004), the Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio (USA, 2006), Naoshima Ferry Terminal in Naoshima (Japan, 2006) and the Zollverein School of Management and Design in Essen (Germany, 2006, which was their first project in Europe). Their important current commissions include the New Museum in New York, Louvre-Lens in the north of France and the EPFL Learning Centre in Lausanne.

Walter Niedermayr (1952, Bolzano) made his international breakthrough with his introspective alpine landscape photographs of the Dolomites ('Die bleichen Berge'). They are impressions of mountains, made from a calculated distance and bathed in a pervasive pale light. One of his themes is the conquest of nature by man. Ten years ago, he started taking pictures of SANAA's buildings in his characteristic style and for artistic reasons of his own. Niedermayr's photographs - usually large-scale diptychs - do not represent architecture, they interpret it. His success in capturing the seemingly lightweight, almost ephemeral character of SANAA's projects is impressive.

The exhibition - with an accompanying publication by Hatje-Cantz, Ostfildern, Germany - is the very first time that the long-standing collaboration between Walter Niedermayr and SANAA has been presented and documented. Both the photographer and the architectural firm focus, in their respective disciplines, on factual givens and contexts, spatial constellations and coexistence, layers and structures. Both manage to visualise apparently incompatible phenomena - the monolithic and the fragmentary, the hermetic and the porous, the amorphous and the solid - in ever new and surprising ways. Both the architecture and the photographs avoid being sensational or overawing. However, both manage to render a construction tangible and to make the viewer aware of the essence of architecture (space) and its relatively visible aspects (its photographic representation).

This exhibition by SANAA and Niedermayr poses the question of how architecture can be shown in a different place, away from its own site-specific reality. Two principles play a crucial role in this.

On the one hand, Niedermayr's photography undermines customary architectural photography, which usually aims at showing what a building looks like in pictures intended to impress, divorced from the building's everyday context. Niedermayr, by contrast, literally tries to penetrate to the core of a building. In his diptychs and triptychs - presented in the exhibition in the form of large prints or projections - he disproves the 'true' or 'one and only' way of looking at a building. His compositions deliberately show the subject from two or more viewpoints at the same time, to emphasize that architecture can be appreciated only through movement, by walking around or through a building.

Sejima and Nishizawa 'frame' this abstract photographic presentation of their work with two subtle interventions, conceived especially for the exhibition: awnings and chairs. These two additions are architectonic statements that reflect on the exhibition space itself, the 450 sq. m. of the corridors and foyer of deSingel. The awnings, made of a metallic curtain material, shield Niedermayr's photographic diptychs from UV rays. The chairs redefine the exhibition space and turn it into a functional foyer. They are a special edition of the 'Rabbit Chair', a 2005 design that has not so far been distributed outside Japan, adapted especially for this exhibition.

This joint project by SANAA and Niedermayr deliberately omits the traditional objects of an exhibition on architecture, such as sketches, plans and scale models. It is up to the photographs, projections, curtains and chairs to represent the extraordinary views and concepts of Sejima + Nishizawa and give the public a taste of them in an unconventional way.

The following projects will be represented (among others) in the exhibition and the catalogue:

- Day Care Center, Yokohama, 2000 by SANAA
- Takeo Head Office, Tokyo, 2000 by Ryue Nishizawa
- House in Plum Grove, Tokyo, 2003 by Kazuyo Sejima
- 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, 2004 by SANAA
- Onishi Hall, Multipurpose Facility, 2005 by Kazuyo Sejima
- Moriyama House, Tokyo, 2005 by Ryue Nishizawa
- Zollverein School of Management and Design, Essen, 2006 by SANAA
- Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art, 2006 by SANAA
- A-Dentist Office, Tsuyama-City, Okayama, 2006 by Kazuyo Sejima
- Naoshima Ferry Terminal, Naoshima, 2006 by SANAA
- Novartis Campus WSJ-158, Basel, 2006 by SANAA
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works of Walter Niedermayr out of the series 'Alpine Landschaften, Raumfolgen, Bildraum, Rohbauten and Artefakte'

Biographies

Kazuyo Seijma
1956 born in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan
1981 obtains Master's degree in architecture from Japan Women's University
joins Toyo Ito & Associates
1987 founds Kazuyo Sejima & Associates
1995 founds SANAA with Ryue Nishizawa
2001- professor at Keio University, Tokyo, Japan

Ryue Nishizawa
1966 born in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan
1990 obtains Master's degree in architecture from Yokohama National University
joins Kazuyo Sejima & Associates
1995 founds SANAA with Kazuyo Sejima
1997 founds Office of Ryue Nishizawa
2001- associate professor at Yokohama National University, Japan

Selected work by SANAA
1996 S-House, Okayama, Japan
1996 Multimedia Workshop, Ogaki, Gifu, Japan
1997 K-Building, Hitachi, Ibaraki, Japan
1997 M-House, Tokyo, Japan
1997 N-Museum, Nakahechi, Wakayama, Japan
1998 Park Café, Koga, Ibaraki, Japan
1998- De Kunstlinie, theatre and cultural centre, Almere, the Netherlands
1999 O-Museum, Ida, Nagano, Japan
2000 Day Care Center, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan
2000 Prada Beauty Isetan, Tokyo, Japan
2001 Prada Beauty, Lee Garden, Hong Kong, China
2002- Extension of the Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno (IVAM), Valencia,
Spain
2003 Dior Building, Omotesando, Tokio, Japan
2003 Issey Miyake by Naoki Takizawa Store, Tokyo, Japan
2003- New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, USA
2004 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art Kanazawa, Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan
2005- Learning Centre, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland
2005- Louvre-Lens, France
2006 Naoshima Ferry Terminal, Noashima, Kagawa, Japan
2006 Zollverein School of Management and Design, Essen, Germany
2006 Novartis Campus WSJ-158, Basel, Switzerland
2006 Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio, USA

Selected solo exhibitions by SANAA
1996 'Works 1987-1996', Architectural Association School of Architecture, London, UK
1998 GA Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
2000 'Recent work', Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
2000 'Recent Projects', Aedes Gallery, Berlin, Germany / travelled to NAi, Rotterdam / Zumtobel Staff-Lichtforum, Vienna
2001 'Recent Projects', Ministerio de Fomento, Madrid, Spain
2002 American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, USA
2003 Gallery - MA, Tokyo, Japan
2005 'Works 1995-2005', 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan / travelled to Basilica Palladiana de Vicenza, Italy / Technikum, Chur, Switzerland
2007 Museo d'arte contemporanea de Castilla y Léon (MUSAC), Léon, Spain
2007 deSingel, Antwerp, Belgium (with Walter Niedermayr)

Selection of group shows featuring SANAA
1996 'Emerging Voices', Venice Biennale, 6th International Architecture Exhibition, Giardini di Castello, Venice, Italy
1998 'Fancy Dance, Japanese contemporary Art after 1990', Art Sonje Museum, Kyongiu, Korea
1999 ' The Un-Private House', The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
2000 'Less Aesthetics More Ethics', Venice Biennale, 7th International Architecture Exhibition, Arsenale, Venice, Italy
2002 'Arne Jacobson - Absolutely Modern', Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark
2002 'Urban Creation', Shanghai Biennale 2002, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China
2004 'Metamorph', Venice Biennale, 9th International Architecture Exhibition, Arsenale, Venice, Italy
2006 'Novartis Campus', Architekturmuseum (with Walter Niedermayr), Basel, Switzerland

Prizes
1998 The Prize of Architectural Institute of Japan, Tokyo, Japan
2000 Erich Schelling Architekturpreis, Kalsruhe, Germany
2002 Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture, American Academy of Arts & Letters, New York, USA
2002 Architecture Award of Salzburg Vincenzo Scamozzi, Salzburg, Austria
2004 Golden Lion for the Most Remarkable Work in the Exhibition 'Metamorph' in the 9th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
2005 46th Mainichi Newspaper Arts Award (Architecture Category), Japan
2005 The Rolf Schock Prize in the category of Visual Arts, Sweden

Monographs on SANAA
1999 'Kazuyo Sejima 1987-1999 / Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa 1995-1999', JA vol. 35, Shinkenchiku-sha, Tokyo, Japan
2000 'Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa 1995-2000', El Croquis, no. 99, Madrid, Spain
2003 'Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / SANAA Works 1995-2003', Toto Shuppan Publishing, Tokyo, Japan
2004 'Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa, 2000-2004', El Croquis, no. 121/122, Madrid, Spain
2005 'Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa, 1987-2006', GA Architect no. 18, A.D.A, EDITA, Tokyo, Japan
2005 '21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / SANAA', Toto Shuppan Publishing, Tokyo, Japan
2006 'The Zollverein School of Management and Design Essen, Germany, Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / SANAA', ed. Kristin Feireiss, Prestel Verlag, Munich, Germany
2007 'Walter Niedermayr / Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA)', ed. deSingel international arts centre, Antwerp, Hatje-Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, Germany