Kunio maekawa biography template

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Kunio maekawa biography template

Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item. Japanese architect. Niigata, Niigata , Japan. Toranomon , Minato, Tokyo , Japan. Career beginnings [ edit ]. Early life and education [ edit ]. Career beginnings under Le Corbusier and Antonin Raymond [ edit ]. Maekawa House [ edit ]. Post-war projects s [ edit ].

Kinokuniya Bookstore [ edit ]. Tokyo Bunka Kaikan [ edit ]. Late career projects ss [ edit ]. Use of uchikomi cast-in-place tiling [ edit ]. Selected projects [ edit ]. Honors and awards [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. University of California Press. The end of the war also brought a close to the dominance of the Imperial Crown Style of architecture that had dictated much of the public construction during the early twentieth century across the Japanese empire.

As a result, Maekawa and his fellow architects were primed to lean more liberally into their modernist impulses, which were no longer regarded as political threats to the Japanese state. Maekawa himself had, at times, been regarded as unpatriotic during the wartime years owing to his interest in Le Corbusier's non-historicist, proto-Brutalist concrete designs.

No longer needing to modify their styles to meet the particular, limiting demands of the state in the post-war, however, Maekawa and his modernist colleagues found greater success with both private and public commissions. His first major project in the post-war period, the Kinokuniya Bookstore, embodied the spirit of urban renewal and cultural revival amidst the ravaged landscape of war.

The two-story wood frame building featured a glass-clad facade facing the street, creating a stark visual and symbolic distinction between the bookshop and its surroundings, the latter of which still largely remained in states of ruin and disarray, dominated by the presence of black markets. At the time of its completion, the front area was still obscured by impoverish barracks and slums, and the entrance could only be accessed through a narrow path leading to the door.

Through the combination of vernacular materials and new design strategies borrowed from his European mentors, Maekawa began to concretize his neo-traditionalist approach to architecture, negotiating the needs of a modern society ravaged by war, imperial order, and American occupation while probing new ways of refashioning national identity through vernacular tropes and regionalist details.

In the wake of the widespread firebombing of cities across Japan, many Japanese citizens were forced to construct makeshift shelters and barracks out of found materials. Within this context of postwar destruction, Maekawa capitalized on his interest in low-cost, prefabricated housing that had been brewing since his time in Le Corbusier's office.

While Le Corbusier's concepts for affordable housing, such as the Dom-Ino House, failed to gain traction due to the high costs of actually producing them, Maekawa was inspired by the free plan advocated by Le Corbusier and the modernist visions for urban living and mass production he proposed. The backs and seats of the chairs are made of shaped plywood, while the arms and legs are made of solid mahogany.

The material used for the tabletop is melamine in cream yellow, and the legs are made of solid mahogany, the same as the chairs. Strikingly, a green fabric was used for the seat of the chairs. These elegant pieces had an appearance that distinguished them from the laminated wood furniture used in other areas of the museum. As an entry-level volunteer, Maekawa learned to conform to the rigorous standards espoused at Le Corbusier's office, and in June he assisted Le Corbusier with Cite Mondiale Mundaneum in Geneva, a structure intended for the League of Nations.

Apart from his obligations to Le Corbusier, Maekawa entered various design competitions independently. Individually he submitted a design for the Nagoya City Hall, but it was not one of his strongest works. Some said that the entry resembled a parking garage because of the structure's prominent side wings, which indeed served as covered parking areas.

Additionally he joined with two of his Paris colleagues, Ernest Weissmann and Norman Rice, in entering a competition for the design of a public office building in Zagreb, Croatia, in After his return to Japan, in the fall of four of Maekawa's independent designs were included in a Tokyo exhibition, and in December of that year, three of Maekawa's designs were featured in the Japanese publication Kokusai kenchiku.

Maekawa departed Paris on April 6, , traveling through Moscow and arriving in Tokyo on April 16, coincidental with Le Corbusier's emergence among the architectural community of Japan. Japan during the years following World War I remained in a period known as Meiji Restoration that was characterized by a revival of traditional architectural styles.

These traditional styles were tempered however by the use of updated, alternate building materials. This intervention by San was especially fortuitous for Maekawa because architectural commissions at that time were in great scarcity. Antonin, however, was involved in the design of the Imperial Hotel. As a member of Raymond's firm, Maekawa served as architect-in-charge for the Viscount Soma residence.

In this instance he applied an oblong, horizontal design reminiscent of a residential villa design by Le Corbusier from the s. From to Maekawa worked in his first independent design, for a Kimura Manufacturing research facility in Hirosaki. This research structure has since been altered and re-adapted to other uses, and the oblong housing design of Viscount Soma, enhanced by a roof garden, was seen again in the design of the Akaboshi Tetsuma housing project in Still working as a project team member for Raymond in the early s, Maekawa in left that firm and established his own company out of a home office; he later moved the operation to the Ginza in Tokyo.

Among their earliest projects were Hinomoto Hall of and Maekawa's design for the Memorial Hall to the Founding of the Nation competition. The use of architectural concrete, extremely large panes of glass, and cast-in-place ceramic tiles characterized much of Maekawa's work during this period. Having learned the use of these new construction materials from Raymond, Maekawa by the s had matured in his use of ceramic tile work, and it had become a signature characteristic of his designs.