Junya Ishigami, the Japanese architect and creative force behind his country's continued dominance on the international scene, has accepted his 2024 Austrian Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts via a special awards ceremony held yesterday in Vienna. 

The 2019 Serpentine Pavilion designer and founder of Tokyo's Junya Ishigami + Associates was recognized by the Prize's jury this January for a boundary-pushing approach that has largely and by many measures contributed to contemporary architecture's embrace of more ethereal and open public space-oriented designs while earning his reputation as the “Master of the Void.”

"Junya Ishigami is one of the most interesting architects of the younger generation. Both his persistent attitude and his visionary work make him the perfect Kiesler Prize winner," Kiesler Foundation president Elke Delugan-Meissi said prior to his acceptance. "His poetically sculptural building designs are always at the interface of architecture, art and social design and take the discipline to a new level. While the building industry has taken over the ownership of what architecture should look like, with a focus on commercial aspects, Ishigami follows his own uncompromising path in realizing his visionary projects."

“Each of his idiosyncratic projects is unique in its aesthetics and refers to the individual circumstances and problems of our time,” she continued. “Thereby he continuously expands and transcends the boundaries of his profession and sets new standards for the future.”

Ishigami is the Prize's 13th overall winner. He follows Theaster Gates (2021) and Yona Friedman (2018), the two most recent recipients. Its €55,000 ($59,000 USD) purse is considered one of the highest monetary awards in architecture. Other notable winners include Andrés Jacque (2016), Toyo Ito (2008), and Olafur Eliasson (2006). 

Two of Ishigami's recent projects — 2022's House and Restaurant in Ube and the new Zaishui Art Museum in Rizhao, China — will be put on display as part of the exhibition “Junya Ishigami” at the Kiesler Foundation that opened today and will remain on view until October 11th, 2024.