Watch the 2024 Pritzker Prize Laureate Lecture

Riken was named the 2024 laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in early March. The architect who celebrated his 79th birthday in April is the 53rd laureate of “architecture's Nobel” and the ninth from Japan. While he is not as widely known as other Japanese recipients, including Tadao Ando (1995), Shigeru Ban (2014), and Arata Isozaki (2019), the lecture should lessen any mystery.

According to the Pritzker Prize, Yamamoto “will uncover his personal journey in the discovery of communities throughout the world, inspiring his socially-driven architecture that blurs the boundaries between public and private dimensions.” His talk will be followed by a panel discussion with previous laureates David Chipperfield (2023), Francis Kéré (2022) and Anne Lacaton (2021), “who will engage in a personal conversation about their very different paths of life.”

The lecture is free and open to the public but has limited capacity, so people who will be in Chicago next week and want to attend should register via the Chicago Architecture Center. For everyone else, the lecture can be streamed live — at 6pm CST (11pm UTC) on May 16, 2024 — via the embed below or on the Illinois Tech YouTube channel.