Riken Yamamoto, who designs dignity and elegance into daily life, wins Pritzker Prize

This promenade leads to the Iwadeyama Junior High School, situated on a hilltop in Ōsaki, Japan. (Mitsumasa Fujitsuka/The Pritzker Architecture Prize)

The bespectacled architect smiled from his white-walled office in Yokohama.

"I'm very proud," he said in English, of winning the 2024 Pritzker Architecture Prize. Sometimes called "the Nobel of architecture," the award has gone to such icons in the field as Philip Johnson, I.M. Pei, Renzo Piano, Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid since it was established in 1979.