Kunio Maekawa Biography, Buildings and Best Books

Kunio Maekawa (1905-1986) was one of the pioneers of modern architecture in Japan. After working in Le Corbusier’s Paris studio and for Antonin Raymond in Tokyo, he opened his own office in 1935 and developed a robust modernism of concrete and tile adapted to Japan, with buildings such as the Tokyo Metropolitan Festival Hall (Tokyo Bunka Kaikan), the Kyoto Kaikan and the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. Kenzo Tange began his career in his office.

Niigata, Tokyo and Paris

Maekawa was born in Niigata in 1905 and graduated from the architecture department of Tokyo Imperial University in 1928. The day after graduating he left for Paris, where he worked for two years in Le Corbusier’s studio, one of the first Japanese architects to do so.

Raymond and his own office

Back in Tokyo he worked for Antonin Raymond from 1930 to 1935 and then founded his own office. During the war years materials were scarce, and his own house in Shinagawa (1942), a timber house with a tall central living room, is now preserved at the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum.

Postwar Japan

After the war Maekawa experimented with prefabricated housing and built the Harumi apartment block (1958). With Junzo Sakakura and Takamasa Yoshizaka he supervised the construction of Le Corbusier’s National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo (1959), and across Ueno Park he built the Tokyo Metropolitan Festival Hall (1961), its concert hall sheltered under a great upturned concrete roof.

Late work

In his later career he developed a technique of tile-clad concrete walls, used at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum (1975) and the Kumamoto Prefectural Museum of Art. He died in Tokyo in 1986.