Dominique Perrault Wins Praemium Imperiale

John Hill

10. September 2015

Dominique Perrault inside the National Library of France

French architect Dominique Perrault has been named a recipient of the Japan Art Association’s 2015 Praemium Imperiale International Arts Award, one of the world's most prestigious awards for architects and other artists.

Perrault is one of five laureates named by the Japan Art Association for 2015:

Architecture: Dominique Perrault (France)
Music: Mitsuko Uchida (Japan/UK)
Painting: Tadanori Yokoo (Japan)
Sculpture: Wolfgang Laib (Germany)
Theater/Film: Sylvie Guillem (France)

National Library of France, Paris, 1995

The Prize describes Perrault as "an architect who steeps himself in the history, environment, and special local nature of the construction site," and whose "innovative buildings are designed to blend into the environment without spoiling those features." This last characteristic is evident especially in the Velodrome and Olympic Swimming Pool in Berlin and Ewha Women's University in Seoul. Nevertheless, he is still known primarily for the 20-year-old National Library of France, which he won the competition for at the age of 36 and received a good deal of criticism for then and soon after it was completed in 1995 (the Prize acknowledges that the library has "gradually earned a positive reputation").

Velodrome and Olympic Swimming Pool, Berlin, 1999

In an interview with Nobutoshi Notsu, Executive Secretary of the Japan Art Association, on word of receiving the prize, Perrault stated:

The Praemium Imperiale has a very very important meaning to all artists and creators across the world, for it is a profoundly cultural award. It is not a commercial award. It is a prize that pays tribute to works, therefore to authors, to writings, to sensibilities that are extremely varied and are involved in all artistic fields. For me, it is a very strong signal – from a symbolic point of view, of course, but also from the point of view that it encourages to keep on developing the widening of the architectural discipline, that is to say of the architectural field. Architecture, as we have said, and as many agree today, cannot be summed up to the construction of buildings.

Architecture has a global dimension that touches all territories, all cultures, all human beings, whoever they are. And architecture must be able to house, to protect everyone in the wealthy economies, but also, and especially, in the poorer economies. And to that end, architects must develop research fields. Architects today are faced with extraordinary questions about protecting the planet, but also about protecting the human kind that lives on this planet. And for that, it is not enough to practice architecture: we must share the architecture that we practice with as many people as possible.

Ewha Womans University, Seoul, 2008

The Japan Art Association bills its annual prize as recognizing "artists ... for their achievements, for the impact they have had internationally on the arts, and for their role in enriching the global community." Perrault's award comes with a 15 million yen (approximately $125,000USD) prize. Perrault and the other laureates will receive their medals at a ceremony in Tokyo on October 21, 2015.