Kazuyo Sejima Named as First Rolex Architecture Mentor

Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima will be the first architecture mentor in Rolex's ten-year Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, which also includes dance, film, literature, music, visual arts, and theatre. The protégé will be named in the fall and will join Sejima for one year to work on Home for All, a project that responds to the housing crisis following the tsunami that hit Japan in 2011. Home for All received the Golden Lion for national participation at the Venice Biennale. Sejima's appointment is a fairly obvious choice for Rolex, who was the lead private funding partner for the Rolex Learning Center at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, designed by SANAA, which Sejima runs with Ryue Nishizawa.