Cersaie 2011 honours Japan

Following the recent earthquake and tsunami, Cersaie 2001 will be honouring Japan by hosting two internationally acclaimed Japanese architects, Kengo Kuma and Kazuyo Sejima.
 “Power of the place” is the title of the talk that will be given on Wednesday 21 September at 2.00 p.m. by Kengo Kuma, founder of the prestigious Tokyo-based practice Kengo Kuma & Associates. Kuma has produced numerous high-profile and innovative works of architecture in Japan and worldwide, including the Water/Glass House in Shizuoka, the Toyoma Center for Performance Arts in Miyagi, the Stone Museum in Tochigi and the Nezu Museum in Tokyo. A recurrent theme of Kuma’s work is that of the void, which he sees as a key component of architecture on a par with other building materials.

Kazuyo Sejima, who started up her own architecture practice in 1987, will give a keynote lecture on Friday 23 September at 11.00 a.m. In 1995, together with Ryue Nishizawa she founded Sanaa, the Tokyo-based practice that has produced some of the world’s most innovative works of architecture in recent years, such as the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, the Serpentine Pavilion in London, the Christian Dior Building in Omotesando, Tokyo and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, which in 2004 won her the Golden Lion at the 9th Venice Biennale International Architecture Exhibition. Winner of last year’s prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize, Kazuyo Sejima has recently been working on other high-profile projects in Europe, including the Rolex Learning Center at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, opened in March 2010, and the new branch of the Louvre Museum in Lens, France, currently under construction.
With her minimalist geometries, Kazuyo Sejima combines the material and the abstract with great simplicity and sees architecture as the ability to bring together design and technology, the avant-garde and a return to the ancient Japanese tradition.