Japanese architect Maki, responsible for the fusion of East and West, has died at the age of 95

TOKYO – Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki, who won the prestigious Pritzker Prize for projects praised for intelligently and artistically merging East and West, has died. He was 95 years old.

Maki, who taught architecture and urban design at Harvard, died June 6, his office, Maki & Associates, said Wednesday. Japanese media reports attributed the cause of death to old age. The office declined to confirm the reports.

Kyoto’s National Museum of Modern Art is considered one of his classic designs, with floating forms of glass, metal and concrete. Its gray exterior appears simple at first glance, but it emits patterns of light reflected from rough and polished marble.

In the US, Maki’s projects have included the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and 4 World Trade Center in New York. He also did the Makuhari Messe exhibition hall in Chiba, Japan, and the Hillside Terrace Complex in Tokyo.

Maki, in the 1980s, designed the Tokyo Spiral building, whose administration mourned his death and was grateful for “the beautiful slopes and the rich space that imagined an urban park”.

In 2013, Maki complained about the then-planned spaceship-like design of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics stadium, considering it too expensive and clashing with the environment. He said he had the support of 100 other people, including architects, in opposing the size of the project proposed by British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadi.

“All the problems I see with the planned stadium are related to the issue of scale,” he said.

This design was eventually abandoned for a more modest-looking design by Kengo Kuma which used pieces of wood to give a natural Japanese look.

Born in Tokyo in 1928, Maki was educated at the University of Tokyo, the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Before opening his own design firm in 1965 in Tokyo, he worked at several firms, including Chicago-based Skidmore Owings and Merrill, or SOM, and Sert, Jackson & Associates in Cambridge as well as in the Washington University St. Louis campus planning office

A dedicated educator, Maki, in addition to teaching at the University of Washington, Harvard and the University of Tokyo, has given lectures around the world. His essays were published in a collection called “Nurturing Dreams” by MIT Press in 2008. In it, he explored the Japanese sense of space called “oku,” which Maki described as “the core of this high-density space organized into multiple layers like a onion.”

The use of the oku allowed the Japanese to provide a sense of depth even in tight areas, according to this theory.

“In the formation of urban space, certain stable concepts that have been sifted and committed to memory by the collective unconscious of the community function automatically,” Maki wrote.

“Oku, a spatial concept peculiar to Japan, is a good example, and I believe that understanding this way of perceiving space is important in formulating ideas about what future cities should be like.”

Maki was the second Japanese to win the Pritzker, hailed as the Nobel Prize for architecture, after Kenzo Tange, his mentor. Maki, along with other Tange students Arata Isozaki It is Kisho KurokawaThey were the pillars of Japanese modernism.

The Pritzkerin selecting Maki, it praised him as part of a new wave of architects who rebuilt postwar Japan.

“He uses light masterfully, making it as tangible a part of each project as the walls and roof. In each building, he seeks a way to make transparency, translucency and opacity exist in total harmony. He uses details to give rhythm and scale to his structures,” said Bill Lacy, a member of the international panel of judges that selected Maki, at the time.

Maki has been honored with other awards such as Israel’s Wolf Prize in 1988 and the Arnold Brunner Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1999. In 2011, the American Institute of Architects honored Maki with its highest award, the AIA Gold Medal.

Japanese media reports said a memorial service was planned. His office declined to give details, saying an official announcement was being prepared.

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