Kunio Maekawa

Kunio Maekawa (Niigata 1905 - Tokyo 1986) is a Japanese architect

Biography

Born with Niigata (northern) in 1905, Maekawa studies L `architecture at the University of Tokyo. Filled with enthusiasm by the innovative ideas presented by Le Corbusier in the middle of the years 1920, it leaves in 1928 for Paris - or more precisely for the street of Sevres - where it works during two years under the direction of this last.

Five years after its return to the Japan, Maekawa creates its own workshop of architecture in Tokyo in 1935. In spite of the Economic crisis and financial, it finds a certain number of customers. If it takes part in several architectural competitions organized under an increasingly authoritative political regime in full expansionist war, it is especially to defy the jurys ultraconservateurs, which can only reject its projects. It will be thus only after the second world war that Maekawa will be able to carry out its monumental masterpieces.

During the Years 1950, it sets for objective of “enraciner the Modern architecture authentic” in its country: the Seat of the Japanese Sogo Bank (1952, the current branch of Gofukubashi of Mitsui-Sumitomo Bank), the Library and the Auditorium of the prefecture of Kanagawa Site (1954), Prefecture of Okayama (1957), the House of Japan for the World Fair of Brussels (1958, destroyed). After having collaborated in the realization of the National museum of Western art Tokyo Site (1959) of Le Corbusier, Maekawa crosses the “time brutalist” at the beginning of the Années 1960: the House (of the Culture) of Kyoto Site (1960), the House of the Culture of Tokyo Site (1961, located opposite the Museum of Le Corbusier and whose big room is called “Tokyo Festival Hall”), the Arts center for the youth of Kanagawa (1962), the Bookstore Kinokuni-ya (1964). It receives the price Auguste Perret in 1963, before being elected vice-president of UIA Site (1965 - 1969).

Le Corbusier must be become itself skeptic with regard to the industrial society and of really existing “civilization machinist”. Its Japanese pupil shares the critical glance of the school of Frankfurt on the instrumental reason, and is worried since the middle of years 1960 to give again human dimension (and to give a right direction) with the diverted modern architecture of the public interest and wellbeing of the citizens: the House (of the Culture) of Saïtama (1966), the municipal Hospital of Hirosaki (1972), Tokio Marine & Fire Insurance Building (1974), the municipal Museum of Tokyo (1975), the Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst of Cologne Site (1976), the prefectoral Museum Kumamoto (1977), the Auditorium of the University of the Music of Kunitachi (1983), the municipal Museum of Niigata (1985), the House (of the Culture) of Ishigaki (1986).

Each visitor can discover by traversing his last works carried out, especially the museums, a system of interior circulation organized around a series of architectural walks, but more or less different from that of Le Corbusier. As the architect Yuzuru Tominaga affirms it, this system of architectural Promenade, that Maekawa seems to have drawn from Japanese arts including the Jardinage or the Calligraphie, constitutes “the supreme point of arrival of the Japanese modern architecture”.

If Maekawa and other architects authentically modern are distinguished from certain architects converted with the Post-modernism in the Années 1980, it is because, for them, it is not a question to borrow from last the one or more architectural or artistic styles easily identifiable. It is precisely in this context that the Japanese experts explain the architectural walk of Maekawa by the term of hitofude-gaki , which indicates a simple pictorial process making it possible to instigate the shape of each object by representing it by a calligraphic sequence of features quickly traced… like the shells or the open hand drawn by Le Corbusier!

In the years 1960 and 1970, Maekawa collaborates with several large Japanese artists, of which the sculptors Masayuki Nagare, Ryokichi Mukaï, the calligrapher Toko Shinoda, the scenario writer Hiroshi Teshigahara, the writer Kobo Abe and the type-setter Toru Takemitsu.

After having supported the protest movement of the students in architecture in 1968, Maekawa recruits the ex-leader in 1970 of it. This last (Isao Hashimoto) will assume as from 1994 the direction of the workshop of architecture founded by Maekawa: Maekawa Associates, Architects & Engineers Site. In 1979, the French Republic decorates it (Officer of the Legion of Honor). But it declines any decoration suggested by the Japanese State.

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