2013 Pritzker Architecture Prize

Thomas J. Pritzker, chairman of The Hyatt Foundation, has announced that Japan's Toyo Ito, 71, is the recipient of the 2013 Pritzker Architecture Prize. Ito is the 37th recipient of what's considered architecture's highest honor, and the sixth from Japan—the others are Kenzo Tange (1987), Fumihiko Maki (1993), Tadao Ando (1995), and the duo Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa (2010). Ito will receive the award at a formal ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, Massachusetts on Wednesday, May 29, JFK's birthday.

Toyo Ito is quoted as saying, upon hearing that he won the prize: "Architecture is bound by various social constraints. I have been designing architecture bearing in mind that it would be possible to realize more comfortable spaces if we are freed from all the restrictions even for a little bit. However, when one building is completed, I become painfully aware of my own inadequacy, and it turns into energy to challenge the next project. Probably this process must keep repeating itself in the future. Therefore, I will never fix my architectural style and never be satisfied with my works."

Ito's selection is not surprising, and is actually long overdue. He has created many significant buildings, from his White U house (1976) in Tokyo to the Sendai Mediatheque (2001) and the Tama Art University Library (2007) in Tokyo. These projects, pictured at right, are evidence of his lack of fixing an architectural style.

These three project can also be seen as markers of three distinct phases in Ito's career: The White U house rethought the domestic realm through minimalist space; the Sendai Mediatheque considered how a library in the digital world would take shape through transparency and the merging of structure and services; the Tama Library merges structure and surface through slender concrete-steel arched walls that define the building's perimeter and its spaces.

This movement from abstraction to lightness to complex structures will reach an apotheosis with the Taichung Opera House in Taiwan, now under construction: