Smiling, charming, shy. He smokes three packs a day, wears frikovatye suits and skirts Comme des Garçons ... The Japanese Kazuyo Sejima (SANAA) is in the galaxy of the most influential architects of the world, along with Norman Foster or Rem Koolhaas.

Related: SANAA: art center with mountains in the background

Together with her partner Ryu Nishizawa, she won the Pritzker Prize (2010). Curator of the XII Biennale in Venice, she proposed the theme of the creator’s dialogue with the user: the theme “architecture based on how people use it”.

The SANAA project in Grace Farms Reserve near the city of New Keynen, Connecticut Due to its silhouette, the building was named River - “River”.

Best of all, Seijima succeeds in modern museum centers and pavilions dissolving in the lap of nature. Her bureau SANAA became known to the public thanks to the Dior store on Omotesando Street in Tokyo. “I’m not completely satisfied with the project. We are so different with Monsieur Arnaud (owner of LVMH - the conglomerate that owns Dior)! He is very rich and wants to sell Dior. And we are not interested. " SANAA - the authors of the branch of the Louvre Museum in Lens, and in 2015 they built another amazing building - the River building in the territory of the cultural center Grace Farms in New Keynen (USA). A narrow ribbon with a length of 430 meters bends among the hills. Between the roof and the base - elegant supports and glass walls, behind which you can see the various rooms, including the library and the auditorium.

Grace Farms, США. 2017.

Her bureau SANAA won the competition for the construction of the New National Gallery in Budapest and the NSW Art Gallery in Sydney. But for the reconstruction project of the legendary Parisian department store La Samaritaine, ordered by the LVMH conglomerate, the court vetoes a second time: a glass shell, in which Seijima wrapped the facades of the building, reminds officials a shower curtain ...

Louvre Lens, arch. SANAA. Lance, France, 2013.

Kazuyo island

Born in 1956, in the province of Ibaraki. After graduating from Japanese Women's University, she worked for several years in the office of Toyo Ito. In 1987 she founded the bureau Kazuyo Sejima and Associates. And in 1995, SANAA (Sejima and Nishizawa and Associates) together with her boyfriend Ryu Nishizawa. In 2010, they received the Pritzker Prize. In the same year she was appointed curator of the XXII Architectural Biennale in Venice.

They say Sejima makes countless models of buildings. To check and improve. The process of making layouts brings to the point of absurdity. Before discussing the building, she needs to physically feel it. “I do not make decisions very quickly,” smiles Kazuo Sejima. “Many architects can say“ yes ”right away, but I will say“ maybe so ”... and still I’m not sure!” In addition, Seijima practices long discussions. “We are trying to find something that we cannot clearly imagine. If I see the result right away, I lose interest. ” And finally, they say, it is bad to separate the important from the unimportant. Evidence? Name SANAA: abbreviation "Sejima and Nishizawa and companions" - all, and proper names, and prepositions, in large letters.

The interiors of the branch of the Louvre in Lens.

She is a master of ephemeral architecture, which conducts a delicate dialogue with nature and the environment without a claim to monumentality. One of the most poetic works of SANAA - the temporary pavilion of the Serpentine Gallery in London was truly magnificent. The light form is dissolved in nature. The layers of polished aluminum and transparent plexiglass hover in the air ...

Temporary Pavilion of the Serpentine Gallery in London. 2009. Plexiglass and polished aluminum

80% of the time at SANAA is spent thinking about how buildings will be designed and how people will look at them. “Our goal is to present the simplest relationship between floor and ceiling, between impenetrability and transparency,” says partner Seijima Ryu Nishizawa. - It can be done in any materials. Concrete is good, steel is good, drywall is also good. ” Architects are not averse to inspiring people to some activities, but do not want to impose them. Their first joint project was the Saishunkan Seiyaku Women Dormitory women's hostel (1991). In this building, eighty women were supposed to be in the first year of work in the city. Usually in the dormitories try to make as much as possible private space. Sejima and Nishizawa did exactly the opposite: they designed twenty rooms with four beds in each and left a large two-level space for communication. They wanted women to spend more time together and make friends. Toyo Ito was hit by this move. The concept referred to early modernism and its utopias, Soviet communal homes. And the Japanese felt the drive of the reorganization of life.

SANAA. The project is a cultural center in Tsuruoka, on the northwest coast of Japan. 2018.

The largest realized project of SANAA was the Museum of Contemporary Art of the XXI century in Kanazawa. Flat white circle co walls - everything is visible; glass is absolutely transparent. The building of the New Museum of Modern Art in New York was decided differently: the vertical tower in the form of an asymmetric pile of cubes is also white.

New Museum of Modern Art in New York. 2007

Fashion designer Naoki Takizawa so defined the main quality of the SANAA architecture: “Sejima and Nishizawa know exactly when to retreat. They make 70% of the project and wait for 30% to be completed in the building by itself. ” Indeed, the boxes erected by SANAA do not immediately produce a special impression. It all starts when the building is filled with people and objects. Watch from the side of this performance is a great pleasure.