Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/130754
21 IMAGE COURTESY OF RAVI DEEPRES Winning a Pritzker Prize could spawn complacency. Japanese architect Toyo Ito has no such ego. In response to architecture's highest honor, the 71-year-old said, "I will never fix my architectural style and never be satisfied with my works." That persistence helps explain Ito's signature lack of signature. In his best-known civic work to date, the public library Sendai Mediatheque, 13 steel-lattice tubes dart and weave through the interior to remove visual obstructions from the clarion facade. Yet, for luxury brand Tod's, structural concrete crisscrosses the glass shell of an Omotesando building. Even simultaneous projects, like two pavilions for an architecture museum in Imabari, Japan, are disparate. Ito explains that extreme variety is fueled as much by a famously collegial work environment as by its leader's psyche, making this award a celebration of joint creativity.—David Sokol Toyo Ito (right); Ito designed the Museum of Architecture in Imabari, Japan. 22 RESTORATION HARDWARE is getting into the art game. Its holding company, RH, has announced RH Contemporary Art, a platform to promote international artists. And they're not wasting any time: in May, RH lent MoMA Rain Room by rAndom International (see number 23) and will debut a commercial gallery space in New York this fall, along with an online platform and an art journal. The gallery's inaugural exhibition, Autonomy*, a survey of rAndom International, opens September 5. rhcontemporaryart.com Future Self by rAndom International 44 CULTURED