The Japan Art Association has named Dominique Perrault as the 2015 Praemium Imperiale Laureate for Architecture! The Awards Ceremony will be held in Tokyo on October 21, 2015 under the patronage of Prince Hitachi.
The
Praemium Imperiale is an international art prize awarded since 1989 by the
imperial family of Japan on behalf of the Japan Art Association in the fields
of painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and theatre/film.
The prize
awarded for outstanding contributions to the development, promotion and
progress of the arts is often considered one of the most prestigious art prize
in the world.
Nobutoshi
Notsu, Executive Secretary of the Japan Art Association, interviewed Dominique
Perrault on june 2nd at the architect studio in Paris. He asked if receiving
the Praemium Imperiale have any special meaning for him:
“The
Praemium Imperiale has a very very important meaning to all artists and
creators across the world, for it is a profoundly cultural award. It is not a
commercial award. It is a prize that pays tribute to works, therefore to
authors, to writings, to sensibilities that are extremely varied and are
involved in all artistic fields. For me, it is a very strong signal – from a
symbolic point of view, of course, but also from the point of view that it
encourages to keep on developing the widening of the architectural discipline,
that is to say of the architectural field.
Architecture,
as we have said, and as many agree today, cannot be summed up to the
construction of buildings.
Architecture has a global dimension that touches all
territories, all cultures, all human beings, whoever they are. And architecture
must be able to house, to protect everyone in the wealthy economies, but also,
and especially, in the poorer economies. And to that end, architects must
develop research fields. Architects today are faced with extraordinary questions
about protecting the planet, but also about protecting the human kind that
lives on this planet. And for that, it is not enough to practice architecture:
we must share the architecture that we practice with as many people as
possible.”
The french
ballet dancer Sylvie Guillem is also named as a 2015 Praemium Imperiale Laureate.
