“We’re never satisfied,” Ryue Nishizawa tells me, halfway through a conversation that spans three decades of practice. It is not a lament, more a statement of fact, and perhaps the clearest expression of how SANAA, the office he co-founded with Kazuyo Sejima in 1995, continues to work.

Their architecture, often described in terms of lightness or simplicity, is the result of long, iterative processes, shaped by evolving methods of collaboration and a constant questioning of assumptions. On the eve of receiving the Royal Gold Medal, the pair reflect not on past achievements but on the gaps between intention and outcome and how they have learnt to work with them.

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