Kazuyo Sejima (*1956) and Ryue Nishizawa (*1966) founded the SANAA architectural offices in Tokyo in 1995. The Japanese architects are currently taking the international architectural scene by storm, with buildings realized and planned in Asia, Europe, and the USA. They were awarded the Golden Lion at the Architecture Biennale in Venice in 2004.Walter Niedermayr is one of the most important photographers of his generation. He won international renown for his photographic explorations of the Alps. By underexposing them, the images are submerged in an unreal white, so that they appear removed from reality.Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa also have an architectural approach oriented toward the artificial and abstract. Explaining their philosophy of design, the architects state, “We are always fascinated by the ambivalence between something and nothing, by the insubstantial identity of material and space.”Apart from the illustrated volume published by Hatje Cantz, the years of cooperation between the photographer and the architects has also resulted in our extraordinarily attractive Collector’s Edition: a photograph in two sections, and a floor plan of SANAA’s most important building to date, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa.
