The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has named SANAA, the Tokyo studio of Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, as the 2025 recipient of the Royal Gold Medal, recognizing “SANAA’s work to reshape the global design landscape, creating spaces that bring simplicity, light and elegance to the fore.”
If one argues that the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the Royal Gold Medal, and the Praemium Imperiale are the three most important architecture awards given to architects around the world for a body of work rather than an individual building, 21 architects or pairs of architects have won all three prizes. Recipients of the trio who are no longer with us are Kenzo Tange, James Stirling, Richard Rogers, Oscar Niemeyer, Frei Otto, I. M. Pei, Zaha Hadid, and Paulo Mendes da Rocha, while the living architects in their company are Norman Foster, Richard Meier, Renzo Piano, Tadao Ando, Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, Rafael Moneo, Rem Koolhaas, Toyo Ito, Herzog & de Meuron, Alvaro Siza, David Chipperfield, and Peter Zumthor.
This list if full of big names, but it is missing Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, who have their own practices but also work together as SANAA. It is under SANAA that Sejima and Nishizawa were chosen the 2010 laureates of the Pritzker Prize, and today's announcement of the 2025 Royal Gold Medal explicitly states the collaborative practice SANAA as the recipient. It is almost assured that the duo will one day receive — most likely sooner rather than later — the Praemium Imperiale, which has been given out annually by the Japan Art Association since 1988, meaning Sejima and Nishizawa will someday join the esteemed list of architects above.
This grouping of the Pritzker, Praemium Imperiale, and Royal Gold Medal together works to touch on how the respective prizes often fail to surprise, and that they are arguably most interesting when they surprise, when they name an unexpected winner. RIBA does it more often than the Pritzker and Praemium Imperiale, though admittedly it has been around much, much longer (1848 versus 1979 for the Pritzker and 1988 for the Praemium Imperiale). Still, there are a few surprises from RIBA over the last three or four decades, including a medal to the City of Barcelona in 1999, to historian Joseph Rykwert in 2014, to social housing architect Neave Brown in 2018, and to educator Lesley Lokko a year ago, who even said at the time, “It came as such a surprise to me. This was never on the cards.”
SANAA, on the other hand, is hardly surprising for the Royal Gold Medal — the only surprise is that they hadn't won already. Their light and nearly ephemeral buildings are appealing and technically innovative, especially when it comes to the uses of glass and concrete. To take just a few examples, the 21st Century Museum of Art, Kanazawa and Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Art Museum found SANAA redefining what museums could be, while the Rolex Learning Center gave the students and teachers at EPFL an undulating setting for open-ended interactions. This last aspect — how SANAA's buildings resonate with the people that use them — is accentuated by RIBA President Muyiwa Oki, as quoted below. While it may not be a surprise, the 2025 Royal Gold Medal does allow SANAA's work to be discussed in new ways and to a wider audience, as news of the award spreads across international mainstream media.
“Exemplifying an unassuming yet impactful leadership in the evolving practice and theory of architecture, SANAA’s designs demonstrate that architecture can balance functionality with profound elegance. True pioneers in the field, their unwavering commitment to sustainable, user-centered design has quietly blazed a trail for others, setting an inspiring standard for the future of our built environment. Showing remarkable clarity and consistency over the decades, their work serves as a lasting testament to the transformative power of architecture - to inspire joy, create a sense of belonging, and connect us to the environments we inhabit.”
“We are delighted and very honored to receive the Royal Gold Medal. We have always believed that architecture can transform and repair environments, helping us to relate to our surroundings, nature and each other. Throughout our careers we have tried to make spaces that bring people together, inviting them to imagine new ways of living and learning collectively. Architecture is always teamwork, and we are very grateful to everyone that has given us opportunities to develop these ideas over the years, and to all those people that have worked tirelessly with us to realise them. This is a very happy moment for us, thank you.”
SANAA will receive the medal at a public celebration taking place in London on May 1, 2025.