The Ogasawara Museum in Nagano, Japan, is one of the first projects by Ryue Nishizawa and Kazuyo Sejima. (Photo by Hisao Suzuki, courtesy of SANAA)

With not much else to do during the Holy Week, I tried to re-orient myself with what architecture means. Architecture, as you know, is more than the built environment; if it were all about surface and dimension, how come visceral responses are elicited whenever we see a building, whether or not we perceive it as beautiful? The lines of a building accrue into a symphony of patterns and if we just look hard, we may intuit why an architect clad the entire structure with sheets of titanium or why the tip of a skyscraper culminates into a sharp angle. 

For this project, I was greatly helped by two sources: the book “Breaking Ground” by Daniel Libeskind, the architect responsible for the re-building of the World Trade Center in New York and the documentary “Sketches of Frank Gehry,” which narrates the life of the architect through the lens of the Oscar-winning director Sydney Pollack. Although their styles are poles apart (Gehry is known for his expressive, metallic creations while Libeskind’s work, concept-driven, features angular use of surfaces), the two architects share the same passion for creating buildings that resist against conventional forms to jolt the onlooker from his usual expectations, thereby achieving a sense of wonder, surprise, even happiness.

For what better role does a structure serve apart from promoting happiness? Not the ha-ha-ha, roll-on-the-floor-hand-in-the-belly happiness but that kind of joy fueled by a profound pleasure while seeing something that wholeheartedly embodies the notion of beauty. Of course, each one of us has a varying notion of beauty but I think that this is precisely what great architecture transcends: our paltry, half-baked definitions about the world and the implicit civilization to ultimately deliver an almost physical exhilaration out of the blue. Out of that deep joy, some people are even moved to tears when seeing buildings, such as the iconic Taj Mahal.

Libeskind is of the same mind: “You can be a melancholic musician and compose in a minor key. You can be a writer with a tragic view, a filmmaker obsessed with despair. But you cannot be an architect and a pessimist. By its very nature, architecture is an optimistic profession; you have to believe, every step of the way, that from two-dimensional sketches, real and inhabitable three-dimensional buildings will emerge…In the end, architecture is built on faith.”

Surely, the works that can make you believe in the greatness of human innovation and creativity include that of Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, the duo behind the Japanese architectural firm SANAA and the latest addition to the prestigious roster of winners of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, sponsored by the Hyatt Foundation and widely considered as the Nobel Prize for the field.

The citation of the jury reads: “For architecture that is simultaneously delicate and powerful, precise and fluid, ingenious but not overly or overtly clever; for the creation of buildings that successfully interact with their contexts and the activities they contain, creating a sense of fullness and experiential richness; for a singular architectural language that springs from a collaborative process that is both unique and inspirational; for their notable completed buildings and the promise of new projects together, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa are the recipients of the 2010 Pritzker Architecture Prize.”

Embodying the minimalist sensibility of Japanese architecture, the works of Sejima and Nishizawa strike a chord for their eerie, ethereal quality, as if the predominantly white structures had transpired in the space they occupy overnight. Because of the inventive juxtaposition of shapes reduced to their purest form and the absolute absence of ornament, the buildings seem to be as weightless like light and air. Theirs is an architecture that is not based on histrionics and exaggerated gestures but on a thoughtful and aerial sense of containment and its infinite and unavoidable relations with the outside environment.

Some of their famous works include the O-Museum in Nagano and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa (both in Japan), the Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum (Ohio), De Kunstline Theater and Cultural Center (Almere, the Netherlands), the New Museum of Contemporary Art (New York, NY), and the recent Rolex Learning Center (Lausanne, Switzerland).

It will be great if one of our Filipino architects, who can stand side-by-side with the world’s best, will be honored with the Pritzer recognition. Until then, it pays to look outward for beautiful, happiness-inspiring buildings as we delicately nurture our sense of place.