SANAA by city: Where to see this award-winning Japanese architecture firm's iconic works

Twenty years ago when I was an architecture student, SANAA (Sejima and Nishizawa and Associates) started gaining prominence. Helmed by architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishisawa and founded in 1995, the Japanese architecture firm’s works were discussed, dissected and used as case studies for their new ways of thinking about spatial design, human interaction and material application.   

Over the years, SANAA has gained international prominence with projects all over the world. These include Grace Farms in Connecticut, Toledo Museum of Art’s Glass Pavilion in Ohio and the New Museum in New York. The firm was also invited to design the 2009 Serpentine Pavilion in London’s Kensington Gardens, an annual commission for top architects to showcase their ethos via a temporary structure.  

In 2012, the duo was awarded the architecture world’s highest honour, the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Kazuyo was only the second woman to claim the prize since it started in 1979. In February this year, she and Nishizawa claimed yet another prestigious prize – the Royal Institute of British Architects’ Royal Gold Medal for architecture, which recognises a person or group of people who have made significant impact on the advancement of architecture through their lifetimes. His Majesty the King, Charles III presented the award on May 1.

Since it started 177 years ago, the RIBA Gold Medal Award has highlighted the works of many luminary architects. Past medallists include Frank Lloyd Wright, Norman Foster, the late-Zaha Hadid, Indian architect Balkrishna Doshi and Oscar Niemeyer.  

The 2025 RIBA Honours Committee cites the ability of SANAA’s works “to reshape the global design landscape, creating spaces that bring simplicity, light, and elegance to the fore.” They are both bold yet sensitive to their local environments, and have the ability “to shape a universal language of architecture that resonates with people everywhere.”   

“We are delighted and very honoured 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,” said Kazuyo and Nishizawa in a press statement upon hearing about the win.  

Kazuyo was born in Ibaraki prefecture, Japan, in 1956 and studied at Japan Women’s University. She worked at reputed architecture firm, Toyo Ito Architect and Associates for six years, which provided ample inspiration for her future work. Kazuyo is a virtuoso in combining materials like glass, aluminium with light and reflectivity, enlivening flat, plain surfaces. Apart from SANAA, she also runs her eponymous firm, Kazuyo Sejima & Associates.  

At the age of 44, Nishizawa was the youngest recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize when he received it in 2010. Like Kazuyo, he also runs his own firm, Office of Ryue Nishizawa. Some of its experimental projects include the much-photographed Teshima Art Musem on the island of Naoshima and House No.03 for Shishi-Iwa House – a cluster of boutique hotels in Karuizawa designed by several Pritzker Prize architects. Sejima is designing SSH No. 04 that is scheduled to open in Hakone, Japan in 2026.

The progressive nature of SANAA’s celebrated works makes them interesting places to experience. Here we highlight nine cities with a SANAA project that you can easily add to your travel itinerary.  

TOKYO, JAPAN

Dior Omotesando 

Tokyo’s famous shopping street is known for many iconic boutiques with landmark architecture, such as the Prada flagship by Herzog & de Meuron and Tod’s by Toyo Ito. Another one is Dior, with a shell by SANAA and interior by American architect Peter Marino.  

SANAA’s architecture is given a light demeanour with a two-layered facade made of a clean clear glass outer skin and a translucent wavy acrylic inside layer. These are sandwiched between horizontal white bands, reflecting the building’s differentiating interior heights. Each level features a different level of translucency, which gives the building a dynamic character, especially at night when it glows like a lantern.   

KANAZAWA, JAPAN

21st Century Museum of Art 

Located in Ishikawa Prefecture, Kanazawa is known for its well-preserved Edo-era architecture and art museums. It is also a UNESCO Creative City of Crafts and Folk Art. One of its most popular attractions is the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art that showcases an original way of viewing and enjoying art, one of which is Leandro Erlich’s famous “swimming pool”.  

Placed in a park, the low-rise building is a 112.5m diameter circular building capped by a thin roof. Within, boxy volumes of various sizes and heights define exhibition halls and other museum functions. The leftover space becomes public areas to meander around in. The unusual layout allows for flexible museum programming while the 360-degree perimeter glass walls intertwine views of the park with the interior.  

NAOSHIMA, JAPAN

Naoshima Port Ferry Terminal 

Naoshima is a pilgrimage hotspot for art lovers who come here to experience spaces and works such as Tadao Ando’s Chichu Art Museum and Yayoi Kusama’s Yellow Pumpkin site-specific sculpture, poised against the sea. SANAA created a small passenger terminal on the Japanese island for passengers waiting to disembark the island, or park their bicycles or motorbikes.   

The firm designed the giant cluster of white bubbles as a landmark that can be easily spotted by visitors heading to the terminal or approaching the terminal by ship. Modelled on a cumulonimbus cloud, it is made of intersecting, fibre-reinforced plastic spheres and a timber grid structure.  

TSURUOKA, JAPAN

Shogin Tact Tsuruoka 

Located in Yamagata Prefecture, Tsuruoka is a great destination for visitors to Japan wishing to seek out lesser-known areas. It has both natural and manmade beauty – towering mountains, open farmland, stretches of coastline. The Kamo Aquarium that has the largest aquarium display of jellyfish in the world, as well as historic and modern architecture. Tsuruoka is also Japan’s only UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy, guaranteeing filled tummies.  

Tsuruoka is home to the Dewa Sanzan (Three Holy Mountains of Dewa). The roof of the SANAA-designed Shogin Tact Tsuruoka mimics their undulating forms. The building is a community hall promoting cultural and artistic activities in the traditional farming town. Made of sheet metal, plastered concrete and curved steel framing, the multiple pitched shapes lower to a one-storey height along the road to harmonise with the surrounding cityscape and historic structures.  

NEW YORK, USA

New Museum 

The New Museum was founded in 1977 to showcase emerging artists. Its original location was in a SoHo loft but in 2003, SANAA was commissioned to create a new home for the museum to establish a strong visual presence and reach a wider audience. It was the first, purpose-built contemporary art museum in New York City.  

SANAA’s architecture is known as being diagrammatically clear and simple. Hence, the New Museum is a series of 10 stacked, staggered boxes rising up the Bowery neighbourhood. The stacking brings natural light into the galleries through skylights through the differential gaps between each ‘box’. The exterior, clad in two layers of industrial aluminium mesh, has a shimmering, textured effect that elevates the commonplace construction material.    

PARIS, FRANCE

La Samaritaine 

La Samaritaine is a late 19th century "Les Grands Magasin" in Paris’ first arrondissement. Among its many programmes is the Cheval Blanc Paris hotel. Started by Ernest Cognacq, the department store grew from a small corner shop in 1870 to a 70,000 sq m block combining Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles. In 2012, SANAA, together with Francois Burgel Architectes Associes, LAGNEAU Architectes and SRA Architects, completed a renovation of the building.    

SANAA carved an internal passageway through the length of the existing building to connect three full-height courtyards. These function as social cores, surrounded by commercial activity. Outside, a new facade for the Rue de Rivoli building stiches together panels of undulating glass that shimmer in the sunlight and reflect its context in a most nuanced, romantic manner.   

LENS, FRANCE

Louvre-Lens 

Opened in 2012 and located in Lens, 200km north of France, Louvre-Lens is the Musee du Louvre’s sister gallery, designed by SANAA in collaboration with New York studio Imrey Culbert. It aims to make art institutions more accessible to people living outside Paris. Lens is a former mining community devastated by both World Wars and the Nazi occupation, and it was hoped that the museum would bring rebirth to the city. 

Similar to some of SANAA’s other ‘transparent’ buildings, Louvre-Lens features a thin, barely-there roof. A 360m-long glass facade dissolves boundaries between the internal and their external environments. The building, which also comprises an aluminium structure, showcases a permanent collection, temporary exhibitions and art from the local neighbourhood.   

LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND   

Rolex Learning Center 

Completed in 2010, the Rolex Learning Center is both architecture and landscape. Among its programmes are a learning laboratory, library, cultural spaces and is an international hub for the EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lusanne) where the Center is located. The building is open to the public.   

Its experimental architecture was conceived as a continuous, undulating structure spread over 22,000 sq m. The architects thought of it as one “big room”. The rising parts of the wavy form create openings that allow people to walk underneath, harmonising it with the park despite its large mass. Inside, the raised portions are used as study spaces and the restaurant as they offer good views – some of the Alps. The building reinvents the conventional campus building and connects deeply with the surrounding landscape.     

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Sydney Modern Project 

Completed in 2022, the Sydney Modern Project is SANAA’s first work in the continent. The A$344 million (S$286.77 million) project transforms the 151-year-old Art Gallery of the New South Wales into a "museum campus" with and old and a new building connected by an Art Garden. SANAA’s contemporary building juxtaposes against the original gallery’s 19th century neoclassical facade, and mitigates a potentially massive volume with a series of interlocking pavilions stepping down the sloped land.   

An environmental case study, this is the first public art museum in Australia to achieve the country’s highest environmental standard for design, a 6-star Green Star design rating by the Green Building Council of Australia. Some highlights include a gallery dedicated to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art in the modern extension, as well as an impressive underground exhibition space converted form a World War 2 naval fuel bunker called the Tank used for large-scale, site-specific commissions.