Ten Japanese Architects

It recently occurred to me that the story of me and architecture can be illustrated by Japanese architects I’ve encountered and appreciated along the way. The period 1970-1980 was pretty intense. This post collects a lot of information in one place. I know this blog is poorly indexed but, if I ever trust an AI agent sufficiently, I’ll ask it to create an index accessible from the home page. Or maybe I won’t as it’s probably faster to just search keyword :misfitsarchitecture as I always do.

So this is my list of ten Japanese architects who influenced me. I hope there’ll be more, and not just Japanese, and not just men, but I’m not sure. Architects don’t seem to communicate with people via buildings anymore.

1 Kenzo Tange

Me putting Kenzo Tange at the top of the list has more to do with chronology than importance. Tange is number one simply because he was the first Japanese architect I foundn out about. When I was 13 or 14 or so, my mother used to give me copies of Reader’s Digest to read and one of them contained an article about Kenzo Tange and the upcoming Expo ’70 in Osaka. There was an image of Tange’s 1964 Tokyo Olympic Stadium and I thought it the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. I recently found the first page of that article online, and recreated the right side of the spread. I was an keen follower of Expo ’70 news.

• Inconvenient History
• Tokyo Notes

And so I tailored my education to become an architect, learning technical drawing after school, getting myself into the maths-science stream and reading all the architecture books in my local library. Most were general histories so, when I entered university I was thrilled to discover the library and how many more books and dimensions to architecture there were. I wasn’t a miserable student but I spent a lot of time in that library and, before my first year was over, had flipped through the back issues of Casabella and DOMUS and, through Japan Architect, I developed a definite thing for modern Japanese architecture. For much of my second year I had Kazuo Shinohara’s first book 16 Houses and Architectural Theory on repeated loan.

2 Kazuo Shinohara

I applied for and received a Japanese government scholarship and did a master’s at Shinohara’s lab at the then Tokyo Institute of Technology. With the exception of House in Uehara, I can’t say any of Shinohara’s houses were formative but I fell in love with the idea of an architect having some kind of intellectual or artistic fixation that was worked through in projects. Even now, I appreciate the houses as ideas rather than as art and maybe it’s time more people did. Both House in Uehara and Repeating Crevice, for example, have useful ideas but Shinohara’s fixing the narrative for how his houses were to be understood has meant people see them only in terms of intention rather than as buildings that might have new things to say or speak to people in new ways as times change. It’s still early days but, unless this happens, Shinohara’s houses will have little meaning other than as buildings some architect did once. Even so, last winter when I saw a secondhand copy of Shinohara’s 16 Houses and Architectural Theory book in a Tokyo bookstore, I was compelled to buy it. I know House in Uehara still exists but I’ll keep my memories of it as they are.

• Kazuo Shinohara’s Houses
• Repeating Crevice, Revisited
• Madame Butterfly
• Revisionist History
• The Middle Ground
• The Asakura House
• The Floating World
• Party Game

3 Hiroyuki Asai

Hiroyuki Asai was a student of Shinohara’s but had already gone rogue by the time I arrived. I would have, and did, like his 1974 Mochizuki House anyway. I misremembered it by its artwork name of House With a Sloping Wall but have no idea why. Whatever its name and whatever the reason, it’s comforting walls make it one of my formative houses but to form what I still don’t know. Hiroyuki Asai went on to have an architectural career away from the rarefied air of Shinohara’s atelier. He called his two careers Phase I and Phase II as if Phase I was just a phase he went through once. I’d like to meet him one day.

• Misleading Narratives

4 Kiyonori Kikutake

Kiyonori Kikutake I also knew from Japan Architect, although it was only much later that I came to appreciate him. I’m still writing about Pasadena Heights. Of all the Metabolists, I admire Kikutake the most. He could produce a vision as well as if not better than any of the others but those visions translated into very real projects such as Aquapolis and Pasdena Heights. To me, these two projects are attempts to reconcile the ideals of Metabolism with gravity.

• The Building Is Not Trying To Be A Mountain
• Honorary Architecture Misfit: Kiyonori Kikutake
• The Mat Building
• Modest Megastructures
• The Rooftop
• The Terrace
• The Dispersed House
• Pasadena Heights v3.0
• Sky Rectangle
• Pilgrimage

5 Tōgō Murano

Around 1975, Tōgō Murano’s Industrial Bank of Japan was on the cover of Japan Architect and I thought the building was so quietly different and perfect and had such a presence I didn’t even register that it had been designed by someone. It was only much later that I came to appreciate what a unique architect Tōgō Murano was. He’s from that generation of architects who believed it was all about making good buildings. I don’t know of any contemporary architect who can match his breadth of scope and his mastery of materials – any material. If an architect like Tōgō Murano exists today, then I’d like to meet them. I don’t think one does. I don’t think one even could.

• Architecture Misfit #21: Tōgō Murano
• Yahata Library
• The Floating World: Part 2
• Supergraphics
• Misfits’ Guide to TOKYO #2

=6 Kazuhiko Namba, Kenji Hirose

I’ve only just realized that Shinohara was the model, but there’s something I admire about architects who, for their entire career, are focussed on perfecting one thing, often developing it into a system for the design and construction of houses. They’ve decided what they want to do and are content to do it, over and over. Kazuhiko Namba and Kenji Hirose are equal six. Kazuhiko Namba only comes first because I remembered his 1975 House with 54 Windows from back then. I only recently learned about his work on the Box House series and that’s why he’s positioned so late in this list.

• Architecture Misfit #32: Kazuhiko Namba

Kenji Hirose preceded Kazuhiko Namba and was in many ways his career was the template for Kazuhiko Namba’s. I only learned about him much later when I was asked to teach a course on Modern Japanese Architecture.

• Architecture Misfit #31: Kenji Hirose

7 Kiyoshi Seike

Yoshirō Taniguchi (1904–79) was Kiyoshi Seike’s teacher and Kiyoshi Seike was Shinohara’s teacher at the then Tokyo Institute of Technology. Seike is from that under-represented group of architects on the leading edge of post-war modernity in Japan. When Gropius was in Japan, he made a point of visit Seike’s House for Prof. Saito, below, as well as two others of his. Note that column in the living room. If we see Shinohara in Hiroyuki Asai (or early Kazunari Sakamoto or Itsuko Hasegawa for that matter), then we must see Seike in Shinohara. It’s natural, even expected of a student but designing something that’s clearly original and clearly influenced at the same time is not easy. There’s a book of Seike’s collected works I’d love to have and learn from but, unless there’s a reprint, I’ve no chance.

• Architecture Misfit #41: Kiyoshi Seike

8 Riken Yamamoto

Riken Yamamoto I’d always known of but, somewhat shamefully, I only understood his genius about 2021. Just prior to the 2024 Pritzker announcement, there was an informal department chat where faulty swapped their first, second and third predictions for that year. Riken Yamamoto was my first, but it wasn’t because I’m clairvoyant. Yamamoto is opinionated and somehow inconvenient. He’s not young and has a more-than-decent body of work with thought and philosophy behind it. It was good to see him “recognized” but I can’t help wondering why it needed to take so long.

• Architecture Misfit #40: Riken Yamamoto
• Death of an Architect
• The Household & Community (1/2)
• The Space of Power vs. The Power of Space: Preface pp. 7-11 / Ch. 1, pp.14-18 / Ch. 1, pp.18-23 / Ch. 1, pp.23-35 / Ch. 1, pp.35-46 / Ch. 1, pp.46-55 / Ch. 2, pp.58-66 / Ch. 2, pp.66-70 / Ch. 2, pp.69-78 / Ch. 2, pp.78-87 / Ch. 2, pp.87-92 / Ch. 2, pp.92-100 / Ch. 3, pp.101-107 / Ch. 3, pp.108-114 / Ch. 3, pp.115-120 / Ch. 3, pp.120-128 / Ch. 3, pp.128-135 / Ch. 3, pp.135-145 / Ch. 4, pp.146-151 / Ch. 4, pp.152-155 / Ch. 4, pp.156-159 / Ch. 4, pp.159-163 / Ch. 4, pp.163-168 / Ch. 4, pp.169-175 / Ch. 4, pp.175-179 / Ch. 4, pp.179-186 / Ch. 5, pp.187-195 / Ch. 5, pp.195-200 / Ch. 5, pp.201-207 / Ch. 5, pp.208-210 / Ch. 5, pp.210-215 / Ch. 5, pp.216-220 / Ch. 5, pp.221-224 / Ch. 5, pp.224-227 / Ch. 5, pp.228-233 / Ch. 5, pp.228-233 / Ch. 5, pp.228-233 / Ch. 5, pp.228-233 / Ch. 5, pp.233-237 / Ch. 5, pp.238-244 / Ch. 5, pp.244-249 (the end)

9 Terunobu Fujimori

The narrative arc of this story of me and architecture would make a better book if Terunobu Fujimori were the last architect in this list but no, it didn’t work that way. Fujimori is an old-school architect in the sense that he only designs for clients he feels an empathy with. Each building is unique. He’s also a very unconventional architect for reasons that are too many to mention again here. His buildings aren’t cheap. His buildings won’t be prototypes for some future kind of architecture. They’re not mass producible. Their design is not AI-assisted.

• Architecture Misfit #42: Terunobu Fujimori (藤森 照信)
• Architecture is not Architecture
• Ch. 4, pp. 174-179

10 Akio Yachida

Akio Yachida’s residential units are generous in volume rather than area, and layouts and sections configure the building without apparent effort. The project below is typical of Yachida’s genius for contriving plans and sections to create for tenants a space in which to live.

• Role Model
• Misfits’ Guide to TOKYO #1

• • •

Now my list is done, I can see some patterns.

• Kenzo Tange and Kiyonori Kikutake have associations with The Metabolists, about whose time I came of architectural age but was still young and impressionable. First love is forever special, even if it’s only for being first.
  
• Kiyoshi Seike > Kazuo Shinohara > Hiroyuki Asai are a progression, even if the order I came to know of them was Shinohara, Asai, Seike.
  
• Kiyonori Kikutake, Kenji Hirose, Kazuhiko Namba, Akio Yachida, Tōgō Murano, Riken Yamamoto and Terunobu Fujimori are all architecture misfits as far as this blog is concerned, even if for different reasons.
  
  • Kenji Hirose, Kazuhiko Namba, and Akio Yachida are alike in exploring and trying to adapt or perfect a single building type. I admire them for that. I can’t imagine them using the word “discourse”. We’re educated to want to be high-fliers but being one of this subset of misfit architects who single-mindedly pursue the one goal is all I ever wanted to be. It’s what I initially admired Shinohara for and why, more recently, I admire Shigenori Uoya⁷ for his dedication to repairing Kyoto one building at a time.
    
  • Tōgō Murano, Riken Yamamoto and Terunobu Fujimori are misfits among misfits, each of them an outlier. Each is consistent and confident in their approach yet so unlike that they may well be the X, Y and Z axes that map different approaches to architecture. Tōgō Murano is definitely old school. His thoughts on architecture are contained in one slim book and 300 projects. Riken Yamamoto is more political but his energies are directed towards what’s good for people and what’s stopping buildings being better for people. Terunobu Fujimori is better known in Japan as an architecture commentator and better known elsewhere for his wacky tea houses on the exhibition circuit. As an architect, only a historian could be so unconstrained by contemporary architectural thought.　

• • •

1. Architecture Misfit #17: Moisei Ginzburg ↩︎
2. Architecture Misfit #18: Ignazio Gardella ↩︎
3. Architcture Misfits #26: Asnago Vender ↩︎
4. Parallel History ↩︎
5. Architecture Misfit #36: Ricardo Bofill ↩︎
6. Death of an Architect ↩︎
7. Architecture Misfit #44: Shigenori Uoya (魚谷繁礼) ↩︎