WE LOVE JAPAN: Architect 
Kazuyo Sejima

There’s the six asymmetrically stacked “bento boxes” that is the New Museum on the Bowery in New York, which according to The New York Times was a pain to build. The circular Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan, has no apparent front or back. In Essen, Germany, the Zollverein School of Management and Design is shaped like a cube and has windows that look like they’ve been punched in at random. And in the see-through Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, 
glass objects are placed 
within a maze of curved transparent walls.

For the fashion keen, she has done her thing for Derek Lam’s Crosby Street store in New York, Dior’s flagship in 
Tokyo’s Omotesando, and Prada beauty counters in 
Hong Kong.

Every building Sejima and her work partner Ryue Nishizawa have designed remains faithful to traditional Japanese design principles – strict construction methods, lightweight materials and seamlessness between the interior and exterior. Yet, they are light, delicate, fluid and functional, with a presence that doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb – like an Azzedine Alaia dress, simple but sharp.

Her latest role: director of the architecture sector for the Venice Biennale (the first woman to do so), which kicks off this September. As part of the event, she will curate the 12th Annual International Architecture Exhibition.

She wears Comme des Garcons by Rei Kawakubo, for whom she recently designed an exhibition – featuring showpieces from the ’90s till today – at Tokyo’s Museum of Contemporary Art.