Maekawa Kunio

Kinokuniya Bookstore

Kanagawa Concert Hall and Library (1954)

The Museum for East Asian Art in Cologne (1977)

Maekawa Kunio ( Japanese 前川國男 ; born May 14, 1905 in Niigata , Niigata Prefecture , † June 26, 1986 in Tokyo ) was a Japanese architect.

Maekawa completed his education in 1928 at the Imperial University of Tōkyō, the forerunner of today's Geidai , and then went to France, where he continued his education under Le Corbusier . Le Corbusier influenced him with his views on the ethics of modern architecture.

When Maekawa returned to Japan in 1930, the country was on the way to becoming a militaristic state. Nevertheless, he was able to implement many plans of the new radical architecture in the spirit of Le Corbusier. Eventually he found himself on the militaristic side when he was a member of the jury as part of the Japanese plans for the “Greater East Asian Prosperity Sphere” for Kenzō Tange's “Monument to the Commemoration of the Construction of Greater East Asia” (大東亜建設記念造営物, Taitōa kensetsu kinen zōei-butsu) voted in 1942.

In 1946 Maekawa built the first major post-war building, the Kinokuniya Bookstore in Shinjuku, Tokyo. At the same time he was involved in the development of mass prefabricated buildings, so-called "premos", for the bombed-out urban population. In his office at the headquarters of the Nihon Sōgo Bank, he worked on improving the smallest of architectural details, thereby laying the foundation for post-war Japanese architecture.

Works

Kinokuniya Bookstore , Tōkyō (1946)
Nippon Sogo Bank (1952)
Kanagawa Concert Hall and Library (1954)
Japanese pavilion for the Brussels World's Fair (1958, dismantled)
Tōkyō Bunka Kaikan (1961)
Museum of East Asian Art - Cologne (1977)
Extension of the National Museum of Western Art - Tokyo (1979)

literature

Jonathan M. Reynolds, Maekawa Kunio and the Emergence of Japanese Modernist Architecture , University of California Press, 2001, ISBN 0-520-21495-1 .
Hiroshi Matsukuma (dir.), The Work of Kunio Mayekawa , Bijutsu Shuppan-sha, Tokyo, 2006, ISBN 978-4-568-60036-0 (4-568-60036-7).
Gérard Monnier et alii, Le Corbusier et le Japon , A. et J. Picard, 2007, ISBN 2-7084-0720-1 .
Tazawa, Yutaka: Maekawa Kunio . In: Biographical Dictionary of Japanese Art. Kodansha International, 1981. ISBN 0-87011-488-3 .

Web links

Commons : Kunio Maekawa - collection of images, videos and audio files

personal data
SURNAME	Maekawa, Kunio
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	前川國男 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Japanese architect
DATE OF BIRTH	May 14, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH	Niigata , Niigata Prefecture
DATE OF DEATH	June 26, 1986
Place of death	Tokyo