Dominique Perrault

The Imperial House of Japan and the Japan Art Association give yearly since 1989 the Praemium Imperiale to five artists in the categories of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Music, and Cinema or Theater. In 2015 the awards – endowed with 111,000 euros – have gone to the Japanese painter Tadanori Yokoo, the German conceptual artist Wolfgang Laib, the Japanese piano player Mitsuko Uchida, the French ballerina Sylvie Guillem, and the also French architect Dominique Perrault. Born in Clermont-Ferrand in 1953, Perrault soon moved to the capital to study at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris, where he graduated in 1978. He continued studies of urban planning and history, and in 1981 he established his own studio and began designing and building. However, he gained renown in 1989, when at just 36 years of age he won the competition called by the then President François Miterrand to build the National Library of France. He immediately entered the ‘star system’ and has never stopped receiving commissions since then, most of them public, as well as numerous international awards.