World

Pritzker Prize goes to Japanese architect who values community in spaces both public and private

Published

2 years ago

March 5, 2024

Pritzker Prize goes to Japanese architect who values community in spaces both public and private

The Pritzker Architecture Prize has been awarded to Japan’s Riken Yamamoto, who earns the field’s highest honor for what organizers called a long career focused on “multiplying opportunities for people to meet spontaneously, through precise, rational design strategies.”

Yamamoto, 78, has spent a five-decade career designing both private and public buildings — from residences to museums to schools, from a bustling airport center to a glass-walled fire station — and prizing a spirit of community in all spaces.

“By the strong, consistent quality of his buildings, he aims to dignify, enhance and enrich the lives of individuals — from children to elders — and their social connections,” the jury said, in part, in a citation released Tuesday. “For him, a building has a public function even when it is private.”

In an interview from Yokohama, where he is based, Yamamoto said he was both proud and “amazed” to win the prize, seen as the Nobel of architecture, at this point in his career.

“Soon I will be 79 years old,” he said. “This prize is a big moment for me. In the near future I think many people will listen to me very carefully. Maybe I can say my opinion more easily than before.”

The architect explained that his craft is not simply to design buildings, but to design in the context of their surroundings, and hopefully to impact the surroundings as well.

A key example: Yamamoto’s virtually transparent Hiroshima Nishi Fire Station, designed in 2000, with a facade, interior walls and floors made of glass. The building invites the public to experience the daily activities of firefighters, something it rarely sees. The result encourages passersby “to view and engage with those who are protecting the community, resulting in a reciprocal commitment between the civil servants and the citizens they serve,” organizers said.

Normally, Yamamoto said, a fire station would be built from concrete. He had a different perspective, which he submitted in a competition with other architects.

“I proposed a very radical idea,” Yamamoto said. “The idea was that the fire house should be the center of the community. Not only their fire work but their daily life should be the center, because they are living at the place, for 24 hours they have activities.” He described firefighters training with ropes and ladders in a central atrium visible from outside.

“Many young children come to see,” he said. “It’s very interesting for them.”

A more recent design with a similar concept is The Circle at Zurich’s airport, designed in 2020, a major commercial center for shops, restaurants, hotels and a convention hall. Yamamoto said he aimed to create an open, 24-hour hour environment, a space to welcome city residents as well travelers.

“I proposed a very open system,” he said, “no gate, no entrance, no door.” He said snow or rain sometimes enters the space via a partially open roof.

Another noted design is the Hotakubo housing project in Kumamoto, Japan, Yamamoto’s first social housing project, made up of 110 homes in 16 “clusters.”

“How do you make a community out of 110 family houses?” he mused in an interview about the 1991 design. “It is very difficult.” Most apartments, he noted, are boxes inside of a bigger box. “It’s very easy to create privacy, but very difficult to make a community because each house is independent,” he said.

The architect’s solution: a tree-lined plaza at the center that can only be entered via a residence. In this way, he explained, he was able to combine the private with the public, giving individual families their privacy while promoting connections between them. Terraces also overlook the common space.

Yamamoto was born in China in 1945 and raised in Japan from early childhood. He said he first grew attracted to architecture while still in high school. He received a master’s degree in architecture from Tokyo University in 1971, and founded his own practice two years later.

Many of his ideas on community were inspired by three extensive trips he took early in his career — not to famous monuments but instead to villages around the world, he said, in Europe, North Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia. In such villages, he examined the relationship of the family unit to the broader community and explored the idea of a “threshold” between public and private space. He also said he was inspired by the writings of philosopher Hannah Arendt.

A book by Yamamoto, “The Space of Power, The Power of Space,” is due to be published next month, an English translation of his 2015 work.

Yamamoto, who lives and works in Yokohama and has held numerous teaching positions, is the 53rd laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, established in 1979 by the late entrepreneur Jay A. Pritzker and his wife, Cindy. Winners receive a $100,000 grant and a bronze medallion.

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World

A look at some of the contenders to be Iran’s supreme leader after the killing of Khamenei

Published

7 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

A look at some of the contenders to be Iran’s supreme leader after the killing of Khamenei

Iran’s leaders are scrambling to replace Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who ruled the country for 37 years before he was killed in the surprise U.S. and Israeli bombardment.

It’s only the second time since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that a new supreme leader is being chosen. Potential candidates range from hard-liners committed to confrontation with the West to reformists who seek diplomatic engagement.

The supreme leader has the final say on all major decisions, including war, peace and the country’s disputed nuclear program.

In the meantime, a provisional governing council composed of President Masoud Pezeshkian, hard-line judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei and senior Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali Reza Arafi is guiding the country through its biggest crisis in decades. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday that a new supreme leader would be chosen early this week.

The supreme leader is appointed by an 88-member panel called the Assembly of Experts, who by law are supposed to quickly name a successor. The panel consists of Shiite clerics who are popularly elected after their candidacies are approved by the Guardian Council, Iran’s constitutional watchdog.

Khamenei had major influence over both clerical bodies, making it unlikely the next leader will mark a radical departure.

Here are the top contenders.

Mojtaba Khamenei

The son of Khamenei, a mid-level Shiite cleric, is widely considered a potential successor. He has strong ties to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard but has never held office. His selection could prove awkward, as the Islamic Republic has long criticized hereditary rule and cast itself as a more just alternative.

Ayatollah Ali Reza Arafi

Arafi is a member of the provisional government council. The senior Shiite cleric was handpicked by Khamenei to be a member of the Guardian Council in 2019, and three years later he was elected to the Assembly of Experts. He leads a network of seminaries.

Hassan Rouhani

Rouhani, a relative moderate, was president of Iran from 2013 to 2021 and reached the landmark nuclear agreement with the Obama administration that U.S. President Donald Trump scrapped during his first term. Rouhani served on the Assembly of Experts until 2024, when he said he was disqualified from running for reelection. Rouhani criticized it as an infringement on Iranians’ political participation.

Hassan Khomeini

Khomeini is the most prominent grandson of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He is also seen as a relative moderate, but has never held government office. He currently works at his grandfather’s mausoleum in Tehran.

Ayatollah Mohammed Mehdi Mirbagheri

Mirbagheri is a senior cleric popular with hard-liners who serves on the Assembly of Experts.

He was close to the late Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, a fellow hard-liner who wrote that Iran should not deprive itself of the right to produce “special weapons,” a veiled reference to nuclear arms.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mirbagheri denounced the closure of schools as a “conspiracy.”

He is currently the head of the Islamic Cultural Center in Qom, the main center for Islamic teaching in Iran.

World

US cleared to use British bases for limited strikes on Iranian missile capabilities

Published

9 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

US cleared to use British bases for limited strikes on Iranian missile capabilities

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The U.S. has been cleared to use British bases for limited strikes on Iran’s missile capabilities after Prime Minister Keir Starmer signed off on the plan, and while U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey stated on Sunday Britain had “stepped up alongside the Americans.”

“The only way to stop the threat is to destroy the missiles at source, in their storage depots or the launchers which are used to fire the missiles,” Starmer confirmed in a recorded statement to the nation.

“The U.S. has requested permission to use British bases for that specific and limited defensive purpose,” he said. “We have taken the decision to accept this request.”

The decision came amid escalation across the Middle East in the wake of U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran and Tehran’s retaliatory missile and drone attacks, raising fears of a broader regional conflict.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer signed off on a plan to use British bases for limited strikes on Iranian missile capabilities. (Kin Cheung / POOL / AFP via Getty Images)

On Feb. 28, in the wake of Operation Epic Fury, Starmer confirmed British planes “are in the sky today” across the Middle East “as part of coordinated regional defensive operations to protect our people, our interests and our allies.”

Healey went on to disclose Sunday that two Iranian missiles were fired in the direction of Cyprus, where Britain maintains key sovereign base areas.

The Royal Air Force confirmed that Typhoon jets operating from Qatar as part of the joint U.K.-Qatar Typhoon Squadron successfully intercepted an Iranian drone heading toward Qatar.

About 300 British personnel are stationed at a naval facility in Bahrain, where Iranian missiles and drones struck nearby areas.

“We’re taking down the drones that are menacing either our bases, our people or our allies,” Healey told “Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips” on Sky. “We’ve stepped up alongside the Americans. We’ve stepped up our defensive forces in the Middle East. We’re flying those sorties.”

ISRAEL’S LARGEST EVER MILITARY FLYOVER HAMMERS IRANIAN MILITARY TARGETS

British Defense Secretary John Healey stressed that the U.K. had “no part” in the American-Israeli strikes on Iran. (Peter Nicholls/Pool via Reuters)

Healey also made sure to stress that the U.K. had “no part” in the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran and insisted all British actions were defensive. “All our actions are about defending U.K. interests and defending U.K. allies,” he said.

When asked if the U.K. would join the U.S. in offensive action, Healey said, “I’m not going to speculate,” according to Sky News.

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Downing Street also confirmed Feb. 28 that Starmer and President Donald Trump had spoken by phone about the “situation in the Middle East,” the BBC reported.

Fox News Digital has reached out to Downing Street for comment.

Emma Bussey is a breaking news writer for Fox News Digital. Before joining Fox, she worked at The Telegraph with the U.S. overnight team, across desks including foreign, politics, news, sport and culture.

World

Pakistan calls troops, orders 3-day curfew as 24 killed in pro-Iran rallies

Published

10 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

Pakistan calls troops, orders 3-day curfew as 24 killed in pro-Iran rallies

Army deployed and some areas in northern Gilgit-Baltistan region put under curfew after deadly violence over Khamenei’s killing.

By AFP, Anadolu and The Associated Press

Published On 2 Mar 2026

Pakistan has called in the military and imposed a three-day curfew in some areas following deadly protests over the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a joint United States-Israeli attack on Saturday.

At least 24 people were killed and dozens injured in clashes between protesters and security forces across the country on Sunday, prompting authorities to tighten security around the US embassy and consulates.