Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki, known for designing the Makuhari Messe convention center in Chiba Prefecture and Hillside Terrace in Tokyo’s Daikanyama district, died on June 6 due to old age, his office said on Wednesday. He was 95.
Maki was considered one of the leading global architects of his generation.
A funeral has already taken place among his relatives, but the agency is considering holding a memorial service in the future, although the date has yet to be determined.
Born in Tokyo in 1928, Maki graduated from the University of Tokyo and received a master’s degree from Harvard University. He subsequently taught architecture and urban planning at Harvard and Washington University.
As a modernist architect, many of his works are made of metal, concrete and glass. Completed in 1969, the Hillside Terrace apartment complex is one of his earlier works, developed in six phases over 25 years.
He was part of a team that designed the 72-story, four-story World Trade Center building in New York, built after the World Trade Center collapsed in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He also designed the redevelopment of the Taipei Main Station area in Taiwan in 2016 and Museum Reinhard Ernst in Germany in 2021.
Maki won the Pritzker Prize, the most prestigious award for an architect, in 1993 and received the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects in 2011.
The Hyatt Foundation, organizer of the Pritzker Prize, described Maki as a modernist “who has fused the best of both Eastern and Western culture” when he presented the prize in 1993.
A public toilet designed by Maki in Ebisu East Park in Tokyo as part of “The Tokyo Toilet” project in which leading architects participated. | AFP-Jiji
