ORIS AWARD FOR EXCEPTIONAL ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT, 2011

KAZUYO SEJIMA, INUJIMA ART HOUSES PROJECT, INUJIMA, JAPAN, 2011

The work on the island of Inujima by Kazuyo Sejima, part of the Naoshima Islands revitalization programme, is unique due to its specific approach within which new interventions create part of a historical continuity. Her projects combine traditional techniques and forms of building with contemporary sensitivity in an authentic manner. The relationship between context and new buildings is reciprocal. This relationship is not dialectic or contrasting, but is realized as a natural part of life’s changes in a specific environment, its rhythms and culture. Sejima’s approach is therefore a guideline for a new and sensitive cultural ecology with a critical approach to the processes of excessive growth or cultural discontinuities, and creates authentic and refined environments. For these reasons, her work clearly advocates a cultural position within which harmony between a heightened sensitivity towards the world that surrounds us and a sensual approach directed towards new aesthetic and intellectual discoveries is realized.

ORIS YTONG AWARD FOR EXCEPTIONAL CREATIVE CONTRIBUTION TO ARCHITECTURE, 2011

RAFAEL MONEO

Rafael Moneo, teacher and builder, has followed his own path, determined by a responsibility and critical distance from the changeable streams of time for almost forty years. Moneo’s buildings are not solitary beings that are unrelated to the life of the city. By changing a house, he changes the city, as can be seen in his extension of Prado National Museum in Madrid. For him, to build within a context means to extend the meaning of a place. He never understands context as one-dimensional, but establishes a relation to history, like in the Museum of Roman Art in Mérida or the Royal Archive in Pamplona, as well as to the topography of a landscape, as is the case in the stunning Kursaal in San Sebastián. Moneo’s architecture, founded on an intense intellectual process, always crosses the boundaries of its own place and time, due to both his personal involvement and emotions, as part of civilization’s overall development in a physical and cultural sense. Thus, it enforces the position of architecture as one of the most significant and influential factors of culture.