The Japan Art Association announced July 16 the names of this year’s five winners of the Praemium Imperiale. Out of the five categories, a 66 year old American architect Steven Holl was named as the laureate in architecture. The awarding ceremony will be held in Tokyo on October 15, where each winner is to be given a medal, a diploma and a prize of \15,000,000.

After receiving a diploma from Washington University, Holl studied architecture in Rome and then at the AA School of London. Since he started his own atelier in 1976, the architect has left his footprints all over the world including United States, China and Japan. Holl’s first work outside US is an apartment complex built in Fukuoka, Japan in 1991. (2014/07/18)