ABSTRACT
Among those who study and practice architecture in Japan, the news of the Pritzker Prize for Toyo Ito in 2013 was long overdue, but at the same time one may wonder what made him the Pritzker Laureate, because after the tsunami triple disaster in 2011, Toyo Ito declared that he entirely changed his architectural philosophy. Ito declared that his work would aim for “social” contribution, especially for the destroyed Tohoku region. A year after Ito, Shigeru Ban also received the prize. The jury citation put significant emphasis on Ban’s contributions for refugees and disaster relief, besides his tremendous contributions to create new architectural language by employing innovative use of structure, materiality, form, and detail (Palumbo 2014, p. 1). The global appreciation that came through the prestigious prize for Ito and Ban, the two icons of contemporary Japanese architecture, solidified the notion of social architecture in Japan.
