Arata Isozaki

Arata Isozaki was a Japanese architect, urban designer, and theorist from Ōita. He was awarded the Royal Gold Medal in 1986 and the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2019. He taught at Columbia University, Harvard University, and Yale University.

Isozaki was born in Oita on the island of Kyushu and grew up in the era of postwar Japan, the eldest of four children of Toji and Tetsu Isozaki. His father was a prominent businessmen. In 1945, he witnessed the destruction of Hiroshima on the shore opposite his hometown. When he accepted the Pritzker Prize in 2019 he stated: "There was no architecture, no buildings, and not even a city. So my first experience of architecture was the void of architecture, and I began to consider how people might rebuild their homes and cities."Isozaki completed his schooling at the Oita Prefecture Oita Uenogaoka High School (erstwhile Oita Junior High School). In 1954, he graduated from the University of Tokyo where he majored in Architecture and Engineering. He completed a doctoral program in architecture from the same university in 1961. Isozaki also worked under Kenzo Tange before establishing his own firm in 1963.

Isozaki's early projects were influenced by European experiences with a style mixed between "New Brutalism" and "Metabolist Architecture" (Oita Medical Hall, 1959-1960), according to Reyner Banham. His style continued to evolve with buildings such as the Fujimi Country Club (1973-74) and Kitakyushu Central Library (1973-74). Later he developed a more modernistic style with buildings such as the Art Tower of Mito (1986-90) and Domus-Casa del Hombre (1991-1995) in Galicia, Spain. In 1983, he supported an apparently unbuildable entry for a sports club in Hong King by the then-unknown architect Zaha Hadid. In 1985 he designed the interior of New York City's Palladium nightclub. The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles, completed in 1986, was his second international project and his best known work in the U.S.In 2005, Arata Isozaki founded the Italian branch of his office, Arata Isozaki & Andrea Maffei Associates. Two major projects from this office are the Allianz Tower CityLife office tower, a redevelopment project in the former trade fair area in Milan and the new Town Library in Maranello, Italy.

Despite designing buildings both inside and outside Japan, Isozaki was sometimes described as an architect who refused to be stuck in one architectural style, highlighting "how each of his designs is a specific solution born out of the project's context." Isozaki won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2019.

Isozaki died on 28 December 2022, at the age of 91.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023