Sanaa

Sanaa is not only the capital of Yemen, it's also the name of an architecture firm founded byKazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa in 1995 in Tokyo, Japan. a globally-recognized architects studio responsible for high-profile projects including The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan, The Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio (in the photo), the New Contemporary Art Museum building in Manhattan, the Zollverein School of Management and Design, Essen, Germany, the recent Rolex Learning Center, Ecole Polytechnique Federale Lausanne, Switzerland and more others.

this year Sanaa won the Pritzker prize, the highest of honors for architecture - 'and the Pritzker goes to...' The Pritzker jury praised their buildings for being 'in direct contrast with the bombastic and rhetorical. instead, they seek the essential qualities of architecture that result in a much appreciated straightforwardness, economy of means and restraint in their work'.

few words about the Pritzker prize - The prize takes its name from the Pritzker family, whose international business interests are headquartered in Chicago. Their name is synonymous with Hyatt Hotels located throughout the world. The purpose of the Pritzker Architecture Prize is to honor annually a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.

in 2006 i saw an exhibition of their work at the Basilica Palladiana in Vicenza, Italy. i remember in particular, the numerous small models made for the space study of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa and i was wandering about the probably sisyphic work they had, to build them.

Barbican

I just came back from a short visit in London and among some other places i never saw before in my previous visits, was the enormous Barbican complex next to the 'city'. despite its huge scale and its central position, you will probably not find it on the 'must do' list of London unless you go to a performance at the Barbican Arts Center.
the complex was built between 1965 and 1976 on an area that was badly damaged during World War II. it was designed by architects Chamberlin, Powell and Bon and it covers an area 160.000 m2. instead of rebuilding the London historic street maze, the architects chose to create a concrete mega-structure maze (try to find your way out without the yellow line...) with more then 2000 apartments, museum, art center, lake and retail. Although the design was inspired by the 'brutalism' of the 50's and Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation, its dimensions and complexity make it a thing apart with no similar developments in the UK. however, the attitude toward the project changed in the last decades and if once it has been voted as London's 'ugliest building' today it considered as a jewel of concrete Brutalist architecture. in 2001 the Minister for the Arts even announced that the Barbican complex will be listed as Grade II (buildings of special architectural or historic interest) and considered a landmark.