FUMIHIKO MAKI
Fumihiko Maki's many buildings are characterized by a commitment to the ongoing project of Modernism as well as a humanist concern for the experience of the people who inhabit them. Both a thoughtful writer and a prolific builder, Maki was a founding member of the Metabolists, a highly influential group of Japanese architects in the 1960s who redefined how designers thought about large-scale urban planning. His own work, while sometimes vast in scale, is consistently responsive to the individual user. His 50-year exploration and expansion of the Modernist vocabulary has resulted in buildings that are technologically inventive, deceptively simple, and which carefully balance lightness and dignity. This book contains over 40 projects, extensively illustrated with drawings, photos, models, sketches, diagrams and computer renderings. These include the Spiral Building in Tokyo, the Fujisawa Municipal Gymnasium, the Kaze-No-Oka Crematorium in Nakatsu, and a tower currently under construction for the World Trade Center site in New York. The projects are organized roughly chronologically, but are also discussed thematically. Some projects, including Hillside Terrace, a mixed-use complex that Maki was involved with for almost 30 years, are examined not just at the moment after construction but as places that evolve over time. Buildings of every scale are included, from a 150 m2 floating pavilion to a 200,000 m2 college campus. The range of projects included, from early, experimental works to projects currently under construction in Canada, Switzerland, Japan, and the US give the reader a chance to examine in full the development of one of the most revered architects working today.
