Sejima and Nishizawa were awarded the Rolf Schock Prize in Visual Arts by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
On October 21, 2005, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa were announced as recipients of the Rolf Schock Prize in Visual Arts, a prestigious international award presented every two to three years by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and associated Swedish cultural academies.
The Rolf Schock Prizes recognize outstanding achievements in logic and philosophy, mathematics, visual arts, and musical arts, with the visual arts category periodically including architecture as an art form. Sejima and Nishizawa's selection reflected growing international recognition of SANAA's work as not merely functional building design but as a significant contribution to contemporary visual and spatial culture.
The award further validated the pair's minimalist, light-filled aesthetic and their conceptual approach to architecture as an art form capable of shaping social interaction and perception. It came in the same period as significant career milestones, including the completion and Golden Lion recognition of the Kanazawa museum in 2004.
This recognition from a scientific and cultural body outside traditional architectural institutions demonstrated the cross-disciplinary appeal and critical acclaim of Sejima's work, reinforcing her position as one of the most significant architectural voices of her generation on the world stage.