The 2024 Pritzker Architecture Award was awarded to a Japanese architect, Riken Yamamoto. If you type its name, the constructive images associated with its name are not particularly striking. What is striking is that the Pritzker Prize continues to reward the trajectory of new buildings and prosperity, and is linked to its own name. It is understood that significant architecture is found in the building and in the task of a person. Ejem responds to a classical representation of the architecture profession, since nowadays many architectural offices are groups formed by several people and do not work under their own name. The function of architecture is the materiality of space, it does not have to be the result of a new building. Perhaps what the change of generation brings in some years is reflected in the Prizker Awards.

But the Pritzker Prize coincides with the day-to-day reason he gave when choosing Yamamoto: that his architecture takes into account the community. Yamoto says that the house he lived as a child had in his front a pharmacy and a community service area, and in the back a private house, and that this experience has delimited his work. It must be said that one of the favorite words of architecture students is the creation of a “space for the community”. This is a corner that aims to overcome the division of private and public space in the residential building and in the neighborhoods in order to accommodate society. In the third category, the possibility of many things happening is represented: eating, reading, making a meeting, playing, being, discussing... They are accessible, well-lit, well equipped and easy to use, so that due to their non-domestic and urban characteristics they cannot pass in other categories. A sharing space for situations of coexistence, to organize joint activities. Yamamoto serves the community and the environment and this sensitivity is a sign of contemporaneity.