is a

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

. He was born in 1971 in Kawasaki-City,

Kanagawa is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Kanagawa Prefecture is the List of Japanese prefectures by population, second-most populous prefecture of Japan at 9,221,129 (1 April 2022) and third-dens ...

and lives and practices in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

Biography

Narukawa graduated in 1994 from the

Shibaura Institute of Technology The , abbreviated as , is a private university of Technology in Japan, with campuses located in Tokyo and Saitama. Established in 1927 as the Tokyo Higher School of Industry and Commerce, it was chartered as a university in 1949. The Shibaura I ...

Tokyo National University of Fine Arts or is the most prestigious art school in Japan. Located in Ueno Park, it also has facilities in Toride, Ibaraki, Yokohama, Kanagawa, and Kitasenju and Adachi, Tokyo. The university has trained renowned artists in the fields of painting, scul ...

with a master's degree in 1996, and the

Berlage Institute The Berlage Institute was an independent unaccredited postgraduate school of architecture in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, the Netherlands, that operated in 1990-2012. Named after the Dutch architect Hendrik Petrus Berlage, the Berlage Institute had an i ...

in Rotterdam with a master's degree in 1999. In 1994 his "Golden Gai Theater" won the Gold Medal in the

Japan Institute of Architects The Japan Institute of Architects (JIA; , ''Nihon kenchikuka kyōkai'') is a voluntary organization for architects in Japan, and an affiliated organization of the Union Internationale des Architectes (UIA). The institution was founded in May 1987 ...

competition for newly graduated architects. In the same year he began his research on geometrical theory. In 1996 his "Tensegrity Modeling Manual" was awarded the Salon de Printemps Prize. Narukawa founded AuthaGraph Co., Ltd in 2009, after working at the Arnhem Academy of Architecture, and Sasaki Structural Consultants. Since 2015, he is an associate professor at

Keio University , mottoeng = The pen is mightier than the sword , type = Private research coeducational higher education institution , established = 1858 , founder = Yukichi Fukuzawa , endowmen ...

, Tokyo in the Environment and Information department.

Work

Narukawa is the inventor of

AuthaGraph AuthaGraph is an approximately equal-area world map projection invented by Japanese architect Hajime Narukawa in 1999. The map is made by equally dividing a spherical surface into 96 triangles, transferring it to a tetrahedron while maintaining ...

, a unique world

map projection In cartography, map projection is the term used to describe a broad set of transformations employed to represent the two-dimensional curved surface of a globe on a plane. In a map projection, coordinates, often expressed as latitude and longitud ...

, that is loosely based on

Buckminster Fuller Richard Buckminster Fuller (; July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing more t ...

Dymaxion map The Dymaxion map or Fuller map is a projection of a world map onto the surface of an icosahedron, which can be unfolded and flattened to two dimensions. The flat map is heavily interrupted in order to preserve shapes and sizes. The projection wa ...

. Narukawa had designed a simplified

tensegrity Tensegrity, tensional integrity or floating compression is a structural principle based on a system of isolated components under compression inside a network of continuous tension, and arranged in such a way that the compressed members (usually ...

modeling manual which he presented in his master thesis 'Tensegrity Modeling Manual' in 1996. The manual enables the construction of tensegrity structural models without complicated calculations or difficult fabrication techniques by a single person. A summary of the manual is publicly available for download. The

projection method can convert an omnidirectional view and a full spherical image, such as a globe, on a rectangular flat display without gaps and overlaps. In 2011 the AuthaGraph mapping projection was selected by the Japanese National Museum of Emerging Science and innovation (Miraikan) as its official mapping tool. Narukawa has received several patents for the AuthaGraph projection method.

Awards

*Gold Medal in the Japan Institute of Architects competition for newly graduated architects for "Golden Gai Theater" (1994) *Salon de Printemps Prize (1996) for "Tensegrity Modeling Manual"

References

External links

AuthaGraph Co., Ltd.'s website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Narukawa, Hajime Japanese architects Artists from Tokyo Tokyo University of the Arts alumni Keio University faculty 1971 births Living people