Kazuyo Sejima

Kazuyo Sejima (妹島 和世, Sejima Kazuyo?, born 1956, Ibaraki prefecture, Japan) is a Japanese architect. After studying at Japan Women's University and working in the office of Toyo Ito, in 1987 she founded Kazuyo Sejima and Associates. In 1995 she founded the Tokyo-based firm SANAA (Sejima and Nishizawa and Associates) together with her former employee Ryue Nishizawa. Sejima was appointed Director of the Architecture Sector for the Venice Biennale, which she curated for the 12th Annual International Architecture Exhibition, held in 2010. She was the first woman ever selected for this position. In 2010 she was awarded the Pritzker Prize, together with Ryue Nishizawa.

Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa have worked on several projects in Germany, France, England, the Netherlands, United States, and Spain. Many of their designs like the New Museum in the Bowery District in New York City as well as their Glass Pavilion for the Toledo Museum of Art involve glass and allowing a space to be open to the world around it. This design element can be found greatly in most of their designs.

Sejima creates most of her designs with very clean modernist elements. They usually include many slick, clean, and shiny surfaces like glass, marble, and metals. She also likes to use squares and cubes within her designs, and these can be found in most of her designs in various different usages. Large windows allow for much natural light to enter a space, and makes her spaces very involved with the worlds that are on the other side of the glass. It's this dual connection of two spaces, that she draws most of her design inspirations.