Yoshio Taniguchi

 

Profile

Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi was born in 1937. His father, Yoshiro Taniguchi (1904-79), was a pioneering modern architect whose career spanned the divide between pre- and postwar Japan. Taniguchi studied at Keio University and Harvard University. He worked for Kenzo Tange from 1964-72, and subsequently established his own firm, becoming one of the leading architects in Japan and increasingly recognized abroad.

Outstanding among Taniguchi’s many realized projects are his uniquely beautiful museums of modern art in Japan: The Shiseido Art House (1978), the Ken Domon Museum of Photography (1983), the Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art (1991), the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art (1995), the Tokyo National Museum Gallery of Horyuji Treasures (1999), and the Kagawa Prefectural Higashiyama Kaii Setouchi Art Museum (2004).

Taniguchi’s work is valued for its spacious, light-filled, and lucid public spaces. In all of his museums, Taniguchi has revealed not only a grasp of the nature of each collection, but also an unsurpassed ability to site each museum in its particular landscape. He incorporates water and stone and greenery with the overall complex to enable the visitor to enjoy the building inside and out, to experience light and space.

Taniguchi’s design for the Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA), completed last autumn, has brought him worldwide attention. Over a 40-year career, MoMA is Taniguchi’s first international commission, and it ranks as one of the most important museum projects in decades. He created an elegant, understated structure on the principle that the museum building should all but disappear, and never overshadow the collection for which it serves as backdrop. It is though a bold building that reflects the vitality of midtown Manhattan and transforms the language of modernism.
Taniguchi’s current projects include the Kyoto National Museum’s 100th Anniversary Memorial Hall, plans for an Asia House in Houston Texas, and projects in Basel Switzerland.
Taniguchi has taught at Harvard and the University of California at Los Angeles as well as in Tokyo and Cape Town. Since 1979 he has been president of Taniguchi and Associates. His work has received more than a dozen awards, and in 1996 was made Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

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Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi was born in 1937. His father, Yoshiro Taniguchi (1904-79), was a pioneering modern architect whose career spanned the divide between pre- and postwar Japan. Taniguchi studied at Keio University and Harvard University. He worked for Kenzo Tange from 1964-72, and subsequently established his own firm, becoming one of the leading architects in Japan and increasingly recognized abroad.

Outstanding among Taniguchi’s many realized projects are his uniquely beautiful museums of modern art in Japan: The Shiseido Art Museum (1980), the Ken Domon Museum of Photography (1983), the Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art (1991), the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art (1995), the Tokyo National Museum Gallery of Horyuji Treasures (1999), and the Higashiyam Kaii Museum in Sakaide City (2004).

Taniguchi’s work is valued for its spacious, light-filled, and lucid public spaces. In all of his museums, Taniguchi has revealed not only a grasp of the nature of each collection, but also an unsurpassed ability to site each museum in its particular landscape. He incorporates water and stone and greenery with the overall complex to enable the visitor to enjoy the building inside and out, to experience light and space.

Taniguchi’s design for the Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA), completed autumn of 2004, has brought him worldwide attention. Over a 40-year career, MoMA is Taniguchi’s first international commission, and it ranks as one of the most important museum projects in decades. He created an elegant, understated structure on the principle that the museum building should all but disappear, and never overshadow the collection for which it serves as backdrop. It is though a bold building that reflects the vitality of midtown Manhattan and transforms the language of modernism. Taniguchi’s current projects include the Kyoto National Museum’s 100th Anniversary Memorial Hall, plans for an Asia House in Houston Texas, and projects in Basel Switzerland.

Taniguchi has taught at Harvard and the University of California at Los Angeles as well as in Tokyo and Capetown. Since 1979 he has been president of Taniguchi and Associates. His work has received more than a dozen awards, and in 1996 was made Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

Biography

  1937  Born 17 October in Tokyo, Japan
  1960 M.A., Mechanical Engineering, Keio University
  1964 M.A., Architecture, Harvard University
  1964-72 Worked for the studio of architect Kenzo Tange
  1970-80 Taught at University of Cape Town, UCLA, Harvard University, Tokyo University and Tokyo Polytechnic University
  1978 Guest lecturer at Harvard University (also in 1987)
  1979 President of Taniguchi and Associates
  1980 Architectural Institute of Japan Award for the Shiseido Art House (1978)
  1984 Yoshida Isoya Prize for the Ken Domon Museum of Photography (1983)
  1987 Awarded by the Japan Art Academy for the Ken Domon Museum of Photography
  1990 Mainichi Art Award for the Tokyo Sea Life Park (1989)
  1994 Murano Togo Prize for the Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art (1991)
  1997 Won the Invitational Proposal Competition for the Expansion and renovation of the Museum of Modern Art, New York
  1998 Designated designer for Centennial Memorial Hall of the Kyoto National Museum
  2001 Architectural Institute of Japan Prize for the Gallery of Horyuji Treasures, Tokyo National Museum (1999)
  2003- Guest Lecturer at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music
  2004 Redesigned the Museum of Modern Art, New York