Junya Ishigami

Junya Ishigami (1974–) is a leading contemporary Japanese architect. Lightness and fragility are the defining features of his ethereal projects, often conceived as seamless continuities between interior and exterior spaces. After working with Kazuyo Sejima at the award-winning firm SANAA from 2000 to 2004, Ishigami quickly emerged as one of the “enfants prodiges” of Japanese architecture and design with daring works such as the ultra-thin table—over 10 meters long with a 3-millimeter-thick top—created in 2006 for the Kirin Art Project, or the transparent KAIT Workshop pavilion for the Kanagawa Institute of Technology, which in 2009 made him the youngest architect to receive the Architectural Institute of Japan Award. His reputation was further cemented through exhibitions at several Venice Architecture Biennales, where he won the Golden Lion in 2010 for “Architecture as Air,” despite some structural issues with the installation. In 2019, he was invited to design the annual Serpentine Pavilion installation in London, an implicit acknowledgment of his now-established status as an international star. His only experience with mass-produced design—though still marked by a certain experimental radicalism—is the Family Chair collection designed in 2010 for the Living Divani brand.