From Tokyo to Hyde Park: seven years of Sanaa architecture

2010: The Rolex Learning Centre in Lausanne, Switzerland. Like a water lily floating on a pond, this exquisite, all-but-seamless concrete building skims its site at the heart of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), one of Europe’s finest colleges
Photograph: Denis Balibouse/Reuters

Inside, there is essentially one room, the various parts gained by ramps rather than stairs, as the 'petals' of the structure rise and fall
Photograph: Hisao Suzuki/AP

2009: The ninth annual Serpentine gallery pavilion in London. Designed as a covered walk in the park (Kensington Gardens in this case), Sanaa’s summer structure appeared more like a piece of jewellery than a conventional building – a necklace, perhaps, adorning the art gallery and its surrounding trees
Photograph: Graeme Robertson

Ryue Nishizawa (left) and Kazuyo Sejima by their Serpentine design. The slight columns that hold up the roof, which is mirrored on its underside, and the slim walkways make this one of the most delicate and charming of the Serpentine’s celebrated commissions
Photograph: Shaun Curry/AFP/Getty Images

2007: New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. What can easily be taken for some slightly industrial building in the Bowery is, in fact, New York’s latest major art gallery, and the building that has made Sanaa’s name internationally. Each of the seven storeys is stepped askew from the one below. Although it looks as if it must be dark inside, daylight plays down from skylights and glazed chutes, illuminating the art inside
Photograph: Serpentine gallery

2006: Controversial and uncompromising, the 35-metre Zollverein School of Management and Design appears to have been dropped from space on to its site between an old coal-mining centre and a sprawling suburb of post-industrial Essen, Germany. Windows seem to have been punctured through the walls as an afterthought, while a roof terrace, hidden behind the parapet, offers bleak views in every direction
Photograph: Serpentine gallery

2004: 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan, the prototype of Lausanne's Rolex Learning Centre. Circular and almost fully glazed around its circumference, the building is punctuated by four garden courtyards and two dozen internal pavilions devoted to one art form or another
Photograph: Serpentine gallery

An aerial view of Japan's Museum of Contemporary Art. The entire structure is a garden pavilion of sorts, brought up to date. As with many of Sanaa’s buildings, it has an ethereal feel
Photograph: Junko Kimura/Getty Images

2003: Located in Tokyo’s fashion district, Harajuku, the elegant multistorey Dior Omotesando store is a simple structure aimed at best displaying the clothes inside. By night, translucent curtains are opened along the seamless glazing on each floor, and the building glows into the Tokyo night. This is architecture as subtle billboard
Photograph: Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP