Dominique Perrault presented with the 2015 Praemium Imperiale Arts Award

Dominique Perrault was announced last month as the architecture laureate for the 2015 Praemium Imperiale Arts Award, which is now in its 27th year. Comparable to the Nobel Peace Prize in prestige, the Praemium award celebrates extraordinary achievement in the fields of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Music and Theatre/Film.

During a formal ceremony today in Tokyo, Japan's Prince Hitachi — honorary patron of the Japan Art Association — presented each Praemium Imperiale medal to the five laureates. In addition to the specially-designed gold medal, winners received a testimonial letter from the Prince and a check worth 15 million yen (approx. US$122,000).

Alongside Dominique Perrault, the 2015 Praemium Imperiale laureates include four notable cultural figures: Japanese-born British pianist Mitsuko Uchida; French ballerina Sylvie Guillem, German sculptor Wolfgang Laib, and graphic designer and artist Tadanori Yokoo. The 2015 Grant for Young Artists award (5 million yen) will go to Myanmar's Yangon Film School (headquartered in Berlin).

The international advisory panel includes William Luers, a former president of the United Nations Association of America and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a retired American ambassador and diplomat; Lamberto Dini, a former Italian prime minister; Christopher Patten, Chancellor of the University of Oxford and former Chairman of the BBC Trust; Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, President of Germany’s Goethe-Institut; former French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin; and Yasuhiro Nakasone, a former Prime Minister of Japan.

The honorary advisors are Jacques Chirac, former President of France; philanthropist David Rockefeller, former CEO of Chase Manhattan Bank; David Rockefeller, Jr., a philanthropist and environmentalist; former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt; and François Pinault, founder of Kering, the French retail conglomerate.

Check out previous architecture laureates on Bustler here.