The Japanese duo Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, partners in SANAA, were honored Sunday with architecture's highest award. Their much-talked-about New Museum on the Bowery in New York is one recent, notable project.

LA Times critic Christopher Hawthorne described their best buildings as "known for a reticent, ethereal and nearly weightless quality, often pairing pure-white interiors with broad expanses of glass."