SANAA on the design project for the Hexagon pavilion

The founders of architectural firm SANAA, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, talk about their project for the Hexagon pavilion, a new building for Garage in Gorky Park.

“When we were invited to work on the Hexagon, we immediately began to think about whether we could somehow preserve the original layout and proportions. And whether we could create something that everyone would use. Garage has always had a strong focus on the architecture of public spaces and their history, and this is very much in line with our practice. The Hexagon has a particular charm and we have tried to retain that in our design”

SANAA (Sejima and Nishizawa and Associates) is a Japanese architectural firm founded in 1995 by Kazuyo Sejima (b. 1956, Hitachi) and Ryue Nishizawa (b. 1966, Yokohama). In 2004 the firm received the Golden Lion at the 9th Venice Biennale of Architecture and in 2010 Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa were awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize. In 2010, Kazuyo Sejima was curator of the 12th Venice Biennale of Architecture. Private and public buildings by the firm are located in Australia, China, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, the UK, and the USA. They include numerous museum buildings, such as the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art (Kanazawa, Japan), Louvre-Lens (Lens, France), and the New Museum (New York).