(Tokyo) Fumihiko Maki, Japanese architect who won the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 1993 and designer of a tower for the new World Trade Center complex in New York, died last Thursday at the age of 95, his agency announced Wednesday in a statement.
He was also one of the founders of metabolism, an avant-garde Japanese architectural movement of the 1960s which proposed designing buildings as living organisms.
Born in Tokyo on September 6, 1928, Fumihiko Maki first studied in Japan with Kenzo Tange, a great master of post-war Japanese architecture, greatly influenced by Le Corbusier.
He then continued his training in the United States, where he began his career in the 1950s, both as an architect and teacher.
Returning to Tokyo in 1965, he founded his own architectural firm, Maki and Associates, which is still in operation today and intends to remain so.
“For me, the most meaningful creative project is my company – Maki and Associates. It remains a work in progress, constantly evolving by adopting new ideas over time, thus ensuring its sustainability,” according to a quote from Mr. Maki mentioned by his office on Wednesday.
Along with other former disciples of Kenzo Tange like Kisho Kurokawa (1934-2007) and Kiyonori Kikutake (1928-2011), Fumihiko Maki was one of the authors of the “metabolism manifesto” in 1960, which laid the foundation for a new architecture inspired by the biological principles of growth and regeneration.
This utopian movement, which experienced its golden age in the 1960s and 1970s, proposed considering architecture as a vital process, with structures integrating harmoniously into the urban environment, but also replaceable or even modular, such as cells.
Among his many and very varied achievements around the world is one of the office towers forming the new World Trade Center complex rebuilt in New York after the attacks of September 11, 2001 (4 WTC, 2013).
Unlike other major contemporary Japanese architects, Fumihiko Maki was rather unknown in France, where he was only associated with one project, the urban plan for the Châteaucreux business district in Saint-Étienne. in the years 2000-2010.
