Architect Ryue Nishizawa was born on February 7, 1966, in Tokyo.
He graduated from the Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, Yokohama National University in 1988. After completing his master's degree at the same university in 1990, he joined Kazuyo Sejima & Associates, Architects. He trained under Sejima for five years from the age of 24.
In 1995, he founded the architectural unit SANAA with Sejima. In 1997, he opened the Ryue Nishizawa Architects. In collaboration with Sejima, he has designed Dior Omotesando, the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, and the EPFL Learning Center in Switzerland. He has also designed many buildings under his own firm, including the Towada Art Center, the Teshima Art Museum, and the Hiroshi Senju Museum of Art in Karuizawa. He has received numerous awards, including the Golden Lion at the 9th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in 2004 and the Pritzker Prize, known as the "Nobel Prize of Architecture," in 2010. Since that same year, he has served as a professor at Yokohama National University Graduate School of Architecture (Y-GSA). Most recently, SANAA designed the Louvre-Lens, an annex to the Louvre in Paris that opened in 2012. Its futuristic exterior, clad in glass and metal, and its 120-meter-long, open-plan hall housing approximately 200 artworks, attracted 900,000 visitors in the first year since its opening. For the design of this building, SANAA won the 2013 Silver Ruler Award, awarded to outstanding French architecture. The "Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa: SANAA Exhibition" is currently running at the Towada Art Center in Aomori, running until March 31st.