Kunio Maekawa

was a Japanese architect and a key figure of modernism in post-war Japan. After early stints in the studios of Le Corbusier and Antonin Raymond, Maekawa began to articulate his architectural language after establishing his firm in 1935, maintaining a continuous tension between Japanese traditional design and European architectural modernism throughout his career.

Firmly insistent that both civic and vernacular architecture should be rendered through a modernist lens appropriate to the contemporary lifestyle of the Japanese people, Maekawa's early work and competition entries consistently pushed back against the dominant Imperial Crown Style. His post-war prefab housing projects borrowed from manufacturing strategies in the automotive industry to create houses that privileged light, ventilation, and openness against the feudal hierarchical principles perpetuated by the interior divisions found in traditional Japanese homes. His home (and one-time office), which he designed and completed in 1942, has been preserved and permanently installed in the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum.

Career beginnings

Early life and education Kunio Maekawa was born in 1905 in Niigata, Niigata Prefecture, in Japan. Maekawa came from a privileged background, and possessed samurai heritage on both sides of the family; his paternal grandfather was a retainer of the Ii clan, while his maternal relatives were retainers of the Tsugaru clan. He entered the prestigious First Tokyo Middle School in 1918, and in 1925 enrolled in the Department of Architecture at Tokyo Imperial University. He participated in projects including the unbuilt (Mundaneum) center—an expansion upon the League of Nations headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, and a utopian vision conceptualized to hold Paul Otlet's Universal Decimal Classification Collection—the Louise-Catherine barge project by Madeleine Zillhardt, and the Salvation Army branch in Paris.

In 1930 he returned to Japan and worked under Czech architect Antonin Raymond, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, for five years. In 1935, Maekawa established his own office, Mayekawa Kunio Associates, and began to enter a number of architectural competitions sponsored by the Japanese Imperial Government. Later on, the firm served as a training ground for many Japanese architects who found success in the decades after the war, including Kenzō Tange and Toshihiko Kimura.

Maekawa House (1942)

The careful balance between traditional and modern design principles in Maekawa's early work is best illustrated by his own home, designed in 1942. The Maekawa House, constructed in wood, has been described as a critical node in his aesthetic development. By bringing piloti inside the house to create a two-story space, while integrating traditional grid formations in the deeply recessed windows, Maekawa deftly combined values borrowed from his European mentors with the vernacular building traditions of Japan.

Post-war projects (1945–1960s)

Owing to the limited resources available during the war, particularly steel, most of Maekawa's projects between 1937 and 1950 were constructed in wood. Within these restricted circumstances, Maekawa sought to innovate traditional building methods using modernist designs, as can be readily observed in his first post-war project, the Kinokuniya Bookstore in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The end of World War II also brought a close to the dominance of the Imperial Crown Style of architecture that had dictated much of the public construction during the early 20th century across the Japanese Empire. As a result, Maekawa and his fellow architects were primed to lean more liberally into their modernist impulses, which were no longer regarded as political threats to the Japanese state. Maekawa himself had, at times, been regarded as unpatriotic during the wartime years owing to his interest in Le Corbusier's non-historicist, proto-Brutalist concrete designs.

Prefabrication Maekawa Ono San-in Kōgyō (PREMOS) (1946–1951) In the wake of the widespread firebombing of cities across Japan perpetrated by the Allied forces between 1942 and 1945, many Japanese citizens were forced to construct makeshift shelters and barracks out of found materials. Within this context of wartime and post-war destruction, Maekawa capitalized on his interest in low-cost, prefabricated housing that had been brewing since his time in Le Corbusier's office. The building contains a main concert hall, used for ballet, opera, and other large concerts, a smaller recital hall, rehearsal rooms and a music library. The 21,000-square foot complex was designed in conjunction with architects Junzo Sakakura and Takamasa Yoshizaka, both of whom had also apprenticed under Le Corbusier. The smaller Recital Hall, which seats 649 individuals and is used for chamber music performances and smaller recitals, has a sound-reflecting panel that resembles a folding screen hung vertically, as well as sound-diffusing concrete niches that similarly call to mind paper cutouts and folds. Both interior elements were designed by sculptor Masayuki Nagare. At the same time, he maintained a consistently apolitical stance throughout the course of his career, in contrast to both his mentor Le Corbusier and other contemporaries in Japan—a decision that was surely driven by personal choice, but as Jonathan Reynolds suggests, also allowed him to remain in the good graces of the academy, authorities and other stakeholders who continued to provide him with large-scale commissions that played a central role in the transformation of urban landscapes in postwar Japan. He pioneered the use of uchikomi ("cast-in-place") tiles, which were set within wooden frames through which concrete was poured in, became a signature feature of late-career projects. The tiles provide structural support and textural dimension, while creating exteriors that are more resistant to deterioration. During his later years, Maekawa cited an increasing affinity towards William Morris' thinkings on material integrity and the value of aesthetically compelling functional goods, and his experimentation with different tiled facades and floors illustrates his keen engagement with the aesthetic dimensions of contemporary industrial production. Maekawa was commissioned for the project, which was slated to have 30 floors and stand 127 meters high. Though the scale seems insignificant today considering Tokyo's high-rise laden skyline, buildings in the surrounding area at the time were limited to a height of just 31 meters due to the requirements of the prewar "aesthetic district" (bikan chiku) designation and the Building Standards Act enacted in 1950. In 1948, however, the bikan chiku system was suspended after its purposes were deemed unnecessary with the onset of the Building Standards Act (municipalities could later pursue this designation provided they establish a separate ordinance specific to their area).

Maekawa's design made use of colossal orders running up the length of the structure, which emphasized the verticality of the building and suppressed the windows to provide an illusion of greater height. The building's fate falls in line with a trend befalling numerous other skyscrapers built in the same era, such as the World Trade Center in Tokyo.

Selected projects 1932 Kimura Industrial Laboratory, Hirosaki, Aomori Prefecture 1936 Hinamoto Hall 1938 Dairen Town Hall 1942 Maekawa House, Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum, Koganei Park, Tokyo 1952 Nippon Sogo Bank, Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolitan Area 1954 Kanagawa Prefectural Library and Music Hall, Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture 1955 The International House of Japan, Tokyo (with Junzo Sakakura and Junzo Yoshimura) 1955 Okayama Prefectural Office, Okayama, Okayama Prefecture 1956 Fukushima Education Center, Fukushima, Fukushima Prefecture 1959 Harumi flats, Harumi, Tokyo 1959 Setagaya Community Centre, Setagaya, Tokyo 1960 Kyoto Kaikan, Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture 1961 Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, Ueno, Tokyo 1964 Hayashibara Museum of Art, Okayama 1964 Kinokuniya Building, Shinjuku, Tokyo 1966 Saitama Cultural Centre, Saitama, Saitama Prefecture 1970 Steel Pavilion, Expo '70, Osaka, Osaka Prefecture 1974 Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Building, Tokyo 1975 Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo 1976 Kumamoto Prefecture Museum of Art, Kumamoto, Kumamoto Prefecture 1977 Museum of East Asian Art, Cologne, West Germany 1978 Yamanashi Prefecture Museum of Art, Kōfu, Yamanashi Prefecture 1979 Fukuoka Art Museum, Fukuoka, Fukuoka Prefecture 1979 National Museum of Western Art, Ueno Park, Taitō, Tokyo (with Junzo Sakakura and Takamasa Yoshizaka) 1981 The Miyagi Museum of Art, Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture 1982 Kumamoto Prefectural Theater, Kumamoto

Gallery

Honors and awards 1953, '55, '56, '61, '62, '66 Prize of the Architectural Institute of Japan (Tokyo) 1959 Decorated as Commander of the Order of Vasa (Sweden) 1962 Asahi Prize (Osaka) 1963 UIA Auguste Perret Prize (France) 1967 Decorated as Commander of the Order of the Lion of Finland (Finland) 1968 Grand Prize of the Architectural Institute of Japan (Tokyo) 1972 Mainichi Art Prize (Osaka) 1974 Prize of Japan Art Academy (Tokyo) 1978 Decorated as Officer of the Ordre national du Mérite (France)