Junya Ishigami awarded Frederick Kiesler Prize

A distinguished international jury selected Japanese architect Junya Ishigami as the 13th winner of the Austrian Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts. During the award ceremony in Vienna on June 17, 2024 the prize was presented to Junya Ishigami by Theresia Niedermüller, Directorate of Arts and Culture at the Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport. The laudatory speech was given by the Norwegian architect Kjetil Thorsen, chairman of this year‘s jury.

The Austrian Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts is one of the most highly endowed international prizes in this area and serves to celebrate the visionary work of the architect, artist, designer, stage decorator, and theorist Frederick Kiesler (1890–1965) who was born in Czernowitz in 1890 and emigrated to the USA in 1926. Amongst the previous winners are Theaster Gates, Yona Friedman, Bruce Naumann, Toyo Ito, Olafur Eliasson, Judith Barry, and Frank O. Gehry. The award, with a substantial prize-money of 55,000 Euros, is presented alternately by the Republic of Austria and the City of Vienna every two years, with the ceremony being organized by the Frederick Kiesler Foundation.

An international jury of experts, comprising theorists, artists, designers, and architects, bestows the prize for “extraordinary achievements in architecture and the arts that relate to Frederick Kiesler’s experimental and innovative attitudes and his theory of ‘correlated arts’ by transcending the boundaries between the traditional disciplines.” The high-profile jury of 2024 included Leonor Antunes (artist, Berlin), Céline Condorelli (artist, London/Milan), Harald Gründl (designer, Vienna), Anupama Kundoo (architect, Berlin) and jury chairman Kjetil Thorsen (architect, Oslo).

Born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1974, Junya Ishigami is one of the most exceptional talents of the international architecture scene. After spending several years in the office of the Pritzker Prize laureate Kazuyo Sejima, SANAA, he established his own firm junya.ishigami+associates in 2004. The singularity of his work and the unconventional way in which he approaches his projects led to swift recognition and many awards. In 2009, he became the youngest ever recipient of the Architectural Institute of Japan Prize, in 2010, he received the Golden Lion of the Architecture Biennale in Venice, and in 2019 he was the first winner of the newly created Obel Award. He has been teaching at Tohoku University in Japan since 2010 and was appointed Kenzo Tange Design Critic at Harvard Graduate School of Design (USA) in 2014.

Ishigami’s major projects include KAIT Workshop for the Kanagawa Institute of Technology (Atsugi/Japan, 2008); the Art Biotop Water Garden (Tochigi/Japan, 2018); his pavilion for the Serpentine Gallery (London, 2019); House & Restaurant (Ube/Japan, 2022), the Zaishui Art Museum (Rizhao/China, 2024); and the Chapel of the Valley in Shandong (China, ongoing).

The Kiesler Foundation is delighted about the jury decision: “Junya Ishigami is one of the most interesting architects of the younger generation. Both his persistent attitude and his visionary work make him the perfect Kiesler Prize winner. His poetically sculptural building designs are always at the interface of architecture, art and social design and take the discipline to a new level. While the building industry has taken over the ownership of what architecture should look like, with a focus on commercial aspects, Ishigami follows his own uncompromising path in realizing his visionary projects. Each of his idiosyncratic projects is unique in its aesthetics and refers to the individual circumstances and problems of our time. Thereby he continuously expands and transcends the boundaries of his profession and sets new standards for the future.” (Elke Delugan-Meissl, President of the Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation)

The Kiesler Foundation is marking the presentation of the prize with the exhibition Junya Ishigami on its premises that opened on June 18 and continues until October 11, 2024. The exhibition, curated by Anna Fliri, presents two projects by junya.ishigami+associates: House & Restaurant (2022, Ube/Japan) and Zaishui Art Museum (2024, Rizhao/China).

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