The Pritzker Prize goes to Japanese duo Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa

The Pritzker Prize, considered the highest honour in architecture and regarded by many as equivalent to the Nobel Prize, has been awarded to the Japanese duo Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, partners in the architecture firm SANAA.

The two architects, who got the award for 2010, have been working together for more than 15 years. They have designed many critically acclaimed buildings across various cities in the world. Notable among them are the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art at Kanazawa in Japan, DeKunstlinie Theatre, Almere, in Netherlands, Rolex Learning Center, Lausanne, in Switzerland and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York.

Rolex Learning Center, Lausanne, in Switzerland

Unlike other contemporary architecture that is bombastic and rhetorical, the works of Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa are refreshingly straightforward and seek the essential qualities of architecture, commended the jury. Their buildings may appear deceptively simple, but behind their economy of form and lightness in the facade, is the unique, ingenious, experientially rich and inspirational fresh design approach. It always offers “new possibilities within the normal constraints of an architectural project as it systematically takes the next step. They use common, everyday materials while remaining attuned to the possibilities of contemporary technology,” the jury further appreciated.

The current works of these two architects include the Hyundai Factory, Seoul, in Korea and the House for China International Practical Exhibition of Architecture, Nanjing.

New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York

Sejima was recently appointed director of the famed and prestigious Venice Biennale's 12th Annual Architecture Exhibition. The duo has earlier won many awards, including the Mario Pani Award, Mexico.

“With this prize I will continue to make wonderful architecture,” responded Sejima to the news about the award. Pointing to the openness in their design, she added that it “is important for a new generation of architecture.” Nishizawa finds the award motivating. “Every time I finish a building I revel in possibilities and at the same time reflect on what has happened… this wonderful prize has given me a dynamic energy that I have never felt before,” he added.

21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art at Kanazawa in Japan

The Pritzker prize carries $100,000 in grant and bronze medallions and will be awarded to Sejima and Nishizawa on May 17 in New York.

Last Supper paintings has food changes

Has even the Last Supper been supersized?

The food in famous paintings of the meal has grown by biblical proportions over the last millennium, researchers report in a medical journal Tuesday.

Using a computer, they compared the size of the food to the size of the heads in 52 paintings of Jesus Christ and his disciples at their final meal before his death.

If art imitates life, we're in trouble, the researchers conclude. The size of the main dish grew 69 percent; the size of the plate, 66 percent, and the bread, 23 percent, between the years 1000 and 2000.

Supersizing is considered a modern phenomenon, but "what we see recently may be just a more noticeable part of a very long trend," said Brian Wansink, a food behavior scientist at Cornell University.

The study was his idea. For biblical context, he sought help from his brother, Craig Wansink, professor of religious studies at Virginia Wesleyan College in Norfolk, Va., and an ordained Presbyterian minister.

The Bible says the Last Supper took place on a Passover evening but gives little detail on specific foods besides bread and wine.

"There's nothing else mentioned. They don't say there's a fruit cup or carrot cake," though other foods such as fish, eel, lamb and even pork have appeared in paintings through the years, Brian Wansink said.

For the study, he used paintings featured in the book "Last Supper," published in 2000 by Phaidon Press. They include perhaps the most famous portrayal of the meal, by Leonardo da Vinci. Computer technology allowed them to scan, rotate and calculate images regardless of their orientation in the paintings.

Details are in the April issue of the International Journal of Obesity.

The study is "not very meaningful science," said Martin Binks, a behavioral health psychologist and a consultant at Duke University Medical Center. "We have real life examples of the increase in portion size — all you have to do is look at what's being sold at fast-food restaurants."

A more contemporary test would be to analyze portion sizes in Super Bowl commercials, he suggested.

"That would be a much more meaningful snapshot of how this society's relationship to food has changed," Binks said.

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source

Paintings and study: http://www.mindlesseating.org/lastsupper/

Sony made 205$ for Michael Jackson songs

The Michael Jackson estate and Sony Music have reportedly agreed on a seven-year, 10-project, $250 million pact that will be the most lucrative in music history, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing sources close to the negotiation. The Jackson estate is guaranteed an expected $200 million from the deal, which will likely feature reissues of the King of Pop’s albums, new greatest hits collections and possibly a Cirque du Soleil show based on Jackson’s music. An official announcement is expected today.

According to reports, one of the first releases from the $250 million deal will be an album of unreleased material culled from Jackson’s personal musical vaults, which reportedly house as much as three albums’ worth of unheard material. That release is expected out by the end of 2010, most likely in November to capitalize on the annual pre-holidays sales. Since his June 25th death last year, Jackson’s catalog has sold 31 million copies, the WSJ reports, and coupled with the concert rehearsal film This Is It, the Jackson estate has earned more than $250 million in the past year.

The deal is expected to also include the release of a DVD collection of all of the King of Pop’s iconic music videos and a remix compilation. Still, it’s the unreleased material that is most notable, as Rolling Stone previously reported, Jackson left hard drives filled with unheard music, much of it recorded during his prime in the 1980s. Two unreleased tracks, “Another Day” and “A Place with No Name,” briefly leaked in 2009. Jackson’s manager Frank DiLeo told RS that roughly 100 completed Jackson songs remain unreleased, including collaborations with Akon, Will.i.am and Ne-Yo. “There are a couple of songs we recorded for the Bad album that we had to cut that are just sensational,” DiLeo said.

The record-breaking $250 million pact is $100 million richer than the 10-year deal Jay-Z signed with Live Nation two years ago. The deal will also go a long way toward helping the Jackson estate pull itself out of the massive debt Michael accrued in the last years of his life. In addition to the new releases and reissues, the $250 million deal also extends Sony’s right to distribute the Jackson catalog through 2017.