Toyo Ito

Toyo Ito (1941-) is one of the most celebrated Japanese architects of his generation, winner of the coveted Pritzker Prize in 2013 and the Imperial Prize in 2010 for the "architecture" category. His career began in the 1960s at the studio of Kiyonori Kikutake, a member of the Metabolist Movement who advocated a visionary architecture in which buildings were to take the form of futuristic megastructures with forms inspired by biology. Toyo Ito makes this lesson his own and overcomes it in a personal "poetry of lightness" also full of conceptual references and attention to technological innovations, always expressed in a fluid and joyful form. His best-known project is the Sendai Mediatheque, all played on the transparency of the facade and on the large support columns that cross all the floors. In the field of product design, the name of Toyo Ito is associated in particular with his collaboration with Horm, awarded with two Compasso d'Oro: the first in 2004 for the Ripples bench, the second in 2008 for the brand's exhibition stands. He has also worked with the brands Sancal, Alessi and, in the past, Driade.