The Obayashi Foundation
Press Release｜18th August, 2020

Olafur Eliasson Awarded the 11th Obayashi Prize

Photo: Brigitte Lacombe, 2016

© 2016 Olafur Eliasson

The Obayashi Foundation is pleased to announce that artist Olafur Eliasson is therecipient of the 11th Obayashi Prize. The Obayashi Prize recognizes and honors
outstanding achievements in research and other activities related to cities. The award ispresented to scholars, whose research have helped solve various urban issues, as well asindividuals who have made great contributions to society by indicating the future of citiesand realizing these visions. The prize is awarded biennially and each awardee receives acash prize of 5 million yen.

About the Obayashi FoundationThe Obayashi Foundation is a public interest incorporated foundation based in Japan that supports scholarly
research related to cities.
In order to create a rich and healthy city, where people can live with a sense of fulfillment, it is crucial to study waysof harmonizing urban structures and functionality with culture and the environment. The Obayashi Foundation wasestablished with an understanding that the support from the private sector was imperative for promoting suchcomprehensive and interdisciplinary research.
The foundation provides grants to support original research projects in the areas of urban planning, cityscapes,urban environments, transportation systems, the history of urban architecture, city and culture, urban policies, andso on. The foundation also gives grants to artists, who work with city-related themes.

https://www.obayashifoundation.org/english/

1The Obayashi Foundation｜Reasons for Selection
With a firm belief that art and design have the power to change the world, Olafur Eliasson has beencreating awareness-shifting experiences, which in turn, have inspired people to take concrete actions toresolve urgent urban issues, such as the issues of the environment and poverty. The Obayashi Prize
commends Mr. Eliasson for such exceptional achievements through his creative activities and various
remarks he has made over the years.

｜Comment from Olafur Eliasson"It is a great honour for me to receive the Obayashi Prize, an award that recognizes thatart can instigate change. In my work, I conceive of urban and public spaces as sites ofdebate and urge people to engage actively with society and, ultimately, with our shared
future. In recent years, I have become committed to environmental action and, through myLittle Sun project, to expanding access to sustainable energy.
Over the last twenty years, I have developed a deep relationship with Japan, and I havealways been inspired by its cultural traditions and extraordinary hospitality. Despite thephysical distancing that keeps us apart at present, my thoughts are with its people, and I
look forward to continuing our ever-growing dialogue”.
——Olafur Eliasson

Olafur Eliasson and Frederik Ottesen
Little Sun, 2012
Photograph: Merklit Mersha, 20122The Obayashi Foundation｜About Olafur Eliasson
Olafur Eliasson

ArtistBorn in 1967. From 1989 to 1995, studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. In 1995, he moved to Berlin
and founded Studio Olafur Eliasson, which today comprises a large team of craftsmen, architects, archivists,researchers, administrators, cooks, programmers, art historians and specialised technicians.
In 2020 the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT) is presenting Eliasson´s most recent solo show Sometimes
the river is the bridge.
He lives and works in Copenhagen and Berlin.

Gropius-Bau in 2010, involved interventions acrossBerlin as well as in the museum. Similarly, in 2011,
Seu corpo da obra (Your body of work) engaged withthree institutions around São Paulo—SESC Pompeia,
SESC Belenzinho, and Pinacoteca do Estado de SãoPaulo—and spread out into the city itself. In 2014,
Riverbed filled an entire wing of Denmark’s Louisiana
Museum of Modern Art with stones and water,
emulating a river in a rocky landscape; later that year,
Contact formed the inaugural exhibition at Fondation
Louis Vuitton, Paris. Verklighetsmaskiner (Realitymachines), at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm in2015, became the museum’s most visited show by aliving artist. In 2016, Eliasson created a series ofinterventions for the palace and gardens of Versailles
and mounted two large-scale exhibitions:
Nothingness is not nothing at all, at Long Museum,Shanghai, and The parliament of possibilities, atLeeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul. Green light–
An artistic workshop, created in collaboration with
TBA21 (Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary),
offers a response to the challenges of mass
displacement and migration. Originally hosted by
TBA21 in Vienna in 2016, the project was part of Viva
Arte Viva, the 57th International Art Exhibition – La
Biennale di Venezia, in 2017.

Olafur Eliasson, Beauty, 1993
Installation view: Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, 2020
Photo: Kazuo Fukunaga

Olafur Eliasson’s art is driven by his interests inperception, movement, embodied experience andfeelings of self. He strives to make the concerns of art
relevant to society at large. Art, for him, is a crucial
means for turning thinking into doing in the world.
Eliasson’s works span sculpture, painting,photography, film and installation. Not limited to theconfines of the museum and gallery, his practiceengages the broader public sphere througharchitectural projects, interventions in civic space,arts education, policy-making and issues ofsustainability and climate change.
Since the mid-1990s, Eliasson has realised numerous
major exhibitions and projects around the world. In
2003, Eliasson represented Denmark at the 50th
Venice Biennale, with The blind pavilion. Later thatyear, he installed The weather project in Tate
Modern’s Turbine Hall, London. In November 2005,
his solo show Your light shadow opened at the Hara
Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. Take your time:
Olafur Eliasson, a survey exhibition organised bySFMOMA in 2007, travelled until 2010 to variousvenues, including the Museum of Modern Art, New
York. Innen Stadt Aussen (Inner City Out), at Martin-

Olafur Eliasson, Colour activity house, 2010
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa
Photo: Keizo Kioku

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The Obayashi Foundation

Eliasson’s site-specific installation Reality projector
opened at the Marciano Foundation, Los Angeles, inMarch 2018, the same month as his solo exhibition
The unspeakable openness of things at Red Brick ArtMuseum, Beijing. Olafur Eliasson: WASSERfarben
opened at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in
the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, in June 2018.
In July 2019, Eliasson’s In real life opened at Tate
Modern, London, and, in 2020, the exhibition
travelled to Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. In 2020
Eliasson also opened Symbiotic seeing at Kunsthaus
Zurich.

Olafur Eliasson and Frederik Ottesen, Little Sun, 2012
Photograph: Michael Tsegaye, 2012

In 2012, Eliasson and engineer Frederik Ottesenfounded a social business, Little Sun. This global
project provides clean, affordable energy tocommunities without access to electricity, encourages
sustainable development through sales of Little Sun
solar-powered lamps and chargers, and raises global
awareness of the need for equal access to energy andlight. <www.littlesun.com> In 2019, Eliasson was
appointed Goodwill Ambassador for renewableenergy and climate action by the United Nations
Development Programme.

Ice Watch by Olafur Eliasson and Minik Rosing
Supported by Bloomberg
Installation: Bankside, outside Tate Modern, 2018
© 2018 Olafur Eliasson

Eliasson has also produced numerous publicprojects. Green river was carried out in various cities
between 1998 and 2001. Eliasson designed
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2007 together witharchitect Kjetil Thorsen for London’s Kensington
Gardens. The New York City Waterfalls,commissioned by the Public Art Fund, were installed
along the city’s waterfronts in 2008. Your rainbow
panorama, a circular coloured-glass walkway atop
ARoS Museum, Aarhus, Denmark, opened in 2011.
Harpa Reykjavik Concert Hall and Conference Centre(2011), for which Eliasson created the façades incollaboration with Henning Larsen Architects, won
the Mies van der Rohe Award 2013. Ice Watchbrought melting icebergs from Greenland toCopenhagen in 2014 and to Paris on the occasion ofthe COP21 Climate Conference in 2015. Fjordenhus
in Vejle, Denmark, the first building designed entirely
by Eliasson, Sebastian Behmann and Studio Olafur
Eliasson, was completed in June 2018.

Olafur Eiasson, The glacier melt series 1999/2019, 2019, detail
Installation view: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Photo: Erika Ede4

The Obayashi Foundation｜About the Obayashi Prize
The Obayashi Prize recognizes and honors researchers, who have provided benchmarks for the futureof cities.
As one of the commendation projects of the Obayashi Foundation, the Obayashi Prize presentsbiennial awards to individuals, who have indicated groundbreaking ideas about the state and the futureof cities and put these visions into practice. The awardees include researchers, whose scholarly works
have contributed extensively to the solution of various issues related to cities.

｜Recipients of Obayashi Prize
Please refer to the foundation’s website below for more details.
https://www.obayashifoundation.org/english/obayashiprize/

The 10th Obayashi Prize (2018)

The 5th Obayashi Prize (2008)

Jack LANGMark LEVINE

President of the Institut du monde arabe(Arab World Institute)

Staff Senior Scientist and Leader of China
Energy Group, Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory (LBNL)(at the time of receiving the prize)

The 4th Obayashi Prize (2006)

The 9th Obayashi Prize (2016)

Karl GANSER

Alejandro ECHEVERRIFormer President of IBA Emscher Park GmbHArchitect

The 8th Obayashi Prize (2014)

The 3rd Obayashi Prize (2004)

Kathryn GUSTAFSON

Germain VIATTE

Landscape Architect

General Curator of Heritage (Conservateur
general du Patrimoine), Museology Project
Director, the Musee du quai Branly(at the time of receiving the prize)

The 7th Obayashi Prize (2012)

The 2nd Obayashi Prize (2002)

Antony GORMLEY

Paul KRUGMAN

Sculptor

Professor, Department of Economics,Princeton University(at the time of receiving the prize)

The 6th Obayashi Prize (2010)

The 1st Obayashi Prize (2000)

ZHOU Ganzhi

Vann MOLYVANN

Member of the Academy of Sciences and theAcademy of Engineering of China / Special
consultant, Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural
Development of the People's Republic of China(at the time of receiving the prize)

President and Executive Director of the APSARA
Authority (Authority for the Protection and theManagement of Angkor and the Region of SiemReap) and Minister of State and Senior Advisorto the Royal Cambodian Government(at the time of receiving the prize)©Lars Gundersen5

The Obayashi Foundation｜Award Ceremony, Commemorative Lecture & Symposium
The 11th Obayashi Prize Award Ceremony, Commemorative Lecture & Symposium
With the prize recipient, Mr. Olafur Eliasson, as the invited guest, we plan to hold an award ceremony
along with a commemorative lecture and a symposium.

Date: 2020 or 2021 (to be determined)
Place: Tokyo, Japan (to be determined)* To be finalized after the consideration of the latest situation with the new coronavirus infection. Furtherannouncements will be made once the details are confirmed.

｜ContactThe Obayashi Foundation

KONWA BLDG 5F, 1-12-22,Tsukiji, Chuo-ku, Tokyo
104-0045, Japan
E-mail：obf-zaidan@obayashi.co.jp

Press Contact:
TM PRESS, Akihiro Mochizuki
E-mail：mochizk@gmail.com

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