Toyo Ito became the sixth Japanese architect to be named recipient of the Pritzker Prize, the most prestigious global award given to an individual architect, on Sunday. Ito, 71, is known for his work that often is marked by sumptuous, lyrical forms and substantial engineering feats.

                                
                             Toyo Ito, the 2013 Pritzker Prize Laureate (Photo by Yoshiaki Tsutsui)

He will officially receive the bronze medallion and $100,000 grant at the Pritzker ceremony on May 29 at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.

“His buildings are complex, yet his high degree of synthesis means that his works attain a level of calmness that ultimately allows the inhabitants to freely develop their life and activities in them,” said Chilean architect and Pritzker juror Alejandro Aravena.

His Sendai Mediateque, a library completed in 2000 in Sendai, Japan, is significant for its transparent beauty as well as its tube structure that allowed it to withstand the 2011 earthquake. The library’s internal structure allows for broad open floorplates that the Pritzker jury said, “permitted new interior spatial qualities.”

                                  
     Inside Sendai Mediateque in Sendai-shi, Miyagi, Japan. This library, completed in 2000, remarkably 
                                        withstood the 2001 earthquake in the area. (Photo by Tomio Ohashi)

                             
                                          The library, completed in 2000, remarkably withstood the 2011
                                            earthquake in the area. (Photo by Nacasa & Partners Inc.)

With engineer Cecil Balmond, Ito designed the 2002 Serpentine Gallery in London to appear as though it is constructed of shattered, suspended fragments. His work ranges in scale from the gallery pavilion to the significant scale of the 40,000-seat World Games Stadium in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, which features a structure that appears like a serpentine tail covering the seating bowl and extending to an entry plaza.

                            
                                 The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London, completed for summer 2002

Sponsored by the Hyatt Foundation, the Pritzker Prize was established in 1979 by the late Jay A. Pritzker and his wife Cindy to honor “a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision, and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.”

                            
                                Inside Meiso no Mori, Municipal Funeral Hall, in Kakamigahara-shi, Gifu, Japan

                                 
                            The Toyo Ito Museum of Architecture in Imabari-shi, Ehime, Japan (Photo by Daici Ano)