CRUNCH: Architecture and Environment

About

Founded by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, SANAA Architects – recipient of the 2025 RIBA Royal Gold Medal – have built an influential international reputation through an architecture of use, space and fluidity, in which physical form seems to dissolve into experience.

In this lecture, Kazuyo will discuss SANAA’s ideas and projects, tracing their development from early works in Japan to major international commissions. Reflecting on the theme of ‘imminence’, she will also consider the role of impermanence and transience in Japanese architecture.

Sejima began her career with Toyo Ito, the last Japanese architect to receive the RIBA Royal Gold Medal (2006) prior to SANAA. She has since mentored a new generation of designers, including Junya Ishigami.

SANAA’s buildings – from the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa to the Rolex Learning Centre in Lausanne and the Sydney Modern Museum – create a distinctive and ephemeral language of their own, often likened to drawings in their subtlety and almost weightless in their material presence.

This event is part of the flagship CRUNCH Series at The Bartlett School of Architecture.

Please note this event has limited capacity and operates on a first-come, first-served basis. Doors close at 18:40.

Speaker biographies

Kazuyo Sejima is a Japanese architect and co-founder of SANAA, the Tokyo-based practice established with Ryue Nishizawa in 1995. SANAA’s works include the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, the Rolex Learning Centre at EPFL Lausanne, Louvre-Lens, Grace Farms in Connecticut, Bocconi University’s Urban Campus in Milan, La Samaritaine in Paris, the Sydney Modern Museum and the Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building at MIT. Sejima’s own projects include House in Plum Grove and the Inujima Art House Project. She was Director of the 12th Venice Architecture Biennale (2010) and has received numerous honours, including the Pritzker Prize (2010), Venice Biennale Golden Lion, Praemium Imperiale, Thomas Jefferson Medal and the 2025 RIBA Royal Gold Medal. She is Professor at the Polytechnic University of Milan, a Visiting Professor at Japan Women’s University and Director of the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum.

Murray Fraser is Professor of Architecture and Global Culture at The Bartlett School of Architecture and Vice-Dean of Research for The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, UCL. He has published extensively on design, architectural history and theory, urbanism, post-colonialism and cultural studies. His books include Architecture and the ‘Special Relationship’ (Routledge, 2007), Design Research in Architecture (Ashgate, 2013), and Architecture and Global Modernity (Routledge, 2018). Murray has played a leading role in international collaborations, exhibitions and symposia, including curating the British Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. He is also an award-winning teacher and editor, and former Chair of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain.

Michiko Sumi is an architect, educator and researcher originally from Tokyo and based in the UK since 2000. She is co-founder of S+C, a design practice working across the UK, Japan and internationally. Previously a Director at Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF), she led major masterplans and adaptive reuse projects, including Floral Court in Covent Garden and the Bermondsey Project. At The Bartlett School of Architecture, she teaches on the Architecture MSci and researches drawing, sound and air in relation to traditional Japanese music and architectural practice. Her academic work includes cross-cultural exhibitions such as IE=Home and installations including Ghost Chapel. She has also taught at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan and regularly collaborates on international design-research projects that bridge cultures and disciplines.

Image: Kagawa Prefectural Arena - View from the sea. Photography by SANAA.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/events/2025/dec/crunch-architecture-and-environment