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was a Japanese
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 the city of
Kanazawa is the capital of Ishikawa Prefecture in central Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 466,029 in 203,271 households, and a population density of 990 persons per km2. The total area of the city was . Etymology The name "Kanazaw ...
,
Ishikawa Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshu island. Ishikawa Prefecture has a population of 1,096,721 (1 January 2025) and has a geographic area of 4,186 Square kilometre, km2 (1,616 sq mi). Ishikawa Pr ...
, Japan. He was a graduate of
Tokyo University The University of Tokyo (, abbreviated as in Japanese and UTokyo in English) is a public research university in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1877 as the nation's first modern university by the merger of several pre-westernisation era ins ...
Department of Architecture and professor at
Tokyo Institute of Technology The Tokyo Institute of Technology () was a public university in Meguro, Tokyo, Japan. It merged with Tokyo Medical and Dental University to form the Institute of Science Tokyo on 1 October 2024. The Tokyo Institute of Technology was a De ...
from 1929–1965. As an architect, he created over 50 buildings and 10 memorials and participated in many professional activities as a statesman of Japanese modern architecture. “Yoshirō Taniguchi must be regarded as one of the most widely known, and, in the best sense, popular architects in Japan. Taniguchi is also well known for his writings and has made a name for himself as a designer of tombs, monuments and memorials which are all exquisite in themselves and suited to their surroundings.”


Biography

Taniguchi's career bridges traditional Japanese building and the shift to western modernism. By the time he entered Tokyo University in 1925, he had already seen the old architectural world of Tokyo give way to the new revivalist style coming from across the ocean including
Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright Sr. (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed List of Frank Lloyd Wright works, more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key ...
's Imperial Hotel, or worse, crumble to the ground in a series of terrible earthquakes, culminating with the
great Kanto earthquake Great may refer to: Descriptions or measurements * Great, a relative measurement in physical space, see Size * Greatness, being divine, majestic, superior, majestic, or transcendent People * List of people known as "the Great" * Artel Great (bo ...
of 1923. He searched for a new way of building that would be capable of surviving such devastation, one in which European engineering and construction technologies promised great freedoms and advances, along which with came new styles. But in a country that had set its sights on modernization, it was the modern architectural movement, especially the
International Style The International Style is a major architectural style and movement that began in western Europe in the 1920s and dominated modern architecture until the 1970s. It is defined by strict adherence to Functionalism (architecture), functional and Fo ...
from
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
, which so impressed Taniguchi that he undertook a journey there, invited to design the garden for the Japanese Embassy under the guidance of notorious German architect
Albert Speer Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer (; ; 19 March 1905 – 1 September 1981) was a German architect who served as Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production, Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany during most of W ...
. In Germany, Taniguchi was much impressed by the severe classicism of Karl Friedrick Schinkel whose somber, elegant, formalism shared a grand and minimalist quality with Speer's work, all in the service of great monumental projects: museums, halls, monuments. With the outbreak of war in Europe, Taniguchi returned to Tokyo on the Yasukuni-maru, the last ship to sail for Japan from Europe during the war, only to see his own country drawn into the same war he was fleeing, and once again, to see it destroyed even more completely than all the earthquakes before and after. After 1947, Taniguchi found the “style” of modern European architecture not quite right for Japan, certainly not for the important cultural buildings he suddenly found himself tasked with creating. He attempted to integrate the many disparate influences which inspired him: the traditional forms and craft-based aesthetics of old Japanese architecture, the “universal” classicism of
ancient Greece Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically r ...
that inspired Schinkel, the Germanic reductivism that transformed classicism into a modern idiom through the work of Schinkel into Speer's awesome expressions of State institutions, the idealistic pure aesthetics of the
International Style The International Style is a major architectural style and movement that began in western Europe in the 1920s and dominated modern architecture until the 1970s. It is defined by strict adherence to Functionalism (architecture), functional and Fo ...
as embodied by the radical new projects of
Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , ; ), was a Swiss-French architectural designer, painter, urban planner and writer, who was one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture ...
and
Mies Van der Rohe Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( ; ; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect, academic, and interior designer. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. He is regarded as one of the pionee ...
, the utopian promise of the democratic transformation of cities through the architecture of the
Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the , was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined Decorative arts, crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., ...
, all coalescing around the most critical question: how to build the large new buildings out of the new materials - steel and concrete - that could make a new city, and one in particular that could resist the great earthquakes that had so afflicted Japan. In a country that had become infatuated with the modern style, Taniguchi began to be the iconoclast. “His work was always in conscious contrast to that of modernists such as Maekawa and Tange, and he continually broadened the possible range of modern architectural vocabulary in Japan.” Taniguchi's idea of modernism reflected the Meiji era approach to the traditional culture of Japan by which even Greek classicism could be seen as modern. “Corbusier and the modern architecture influenced Taniguchi, but he is also in sympathy with Classical, particularly Renaissance, architecture.” It is for this reason that Taniguchi straddles the spectrum from traditional to modern and makes it difficult to place him specifically at any one point leading some to see him as “a link between the newer school of modern architects and the more conservative school that based its work more directly on Japanese vernacular traditions.” Taniguchi's work took the form largely of projects in the public realm, with a focus on cultural entities which not only had to serve important practical functions but which also were burdened with conveying Japan's cultural wisdom, both looking back at a lost and tragic history as well as looking to instill new ideals and a promise of the future. There was no better place to do so than in the educational sector and he was embraced by several universities to produce a number of buildings for their newly re-built and growing campuses, as well as many of the museums, theaters, cultural centers, and monuments that would become important parts of the new Tokyo. In the course of re-building, Taniguchi came to realize the importance of saving the remnants of the traditional buildings of Japan, and in 1952, he became an active participant in the historical preservation movement, joining Japan's Cultural Properties Specialists Council as well as the Japan Agency for Cultural Affairs. One of his lesser known undertakings was the creation, in 1965, of the Meiji Mura Village, a vast compound north of
Nagoya is the largest city in the Chūbu region of Japan. It is the list of cities in Japan, fourth-most populous city in Japan, with a population of 2.3million in 2020, and the principal city of the Chūkyō metropolitan area, which is the List of ...
dedicated to the re-construction and salvage of the great and typical buildings of the Japan that inspired him, the Meiji era and modern works that typified the Japanese interpretation of western architecture, including
Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright Sr. (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed List of Frank Lloyd Wright works, more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key ...
's own Imperial Hotel, demolished in 1968 and carefully re-built at Meiji Mura, piece by piece, under Taniguchi's direction. Taniguchi is the father of Yoshio Taniguchi who, despite having designed numerous significant buildings in Tokyo, is best known for another great monument to modernism, the 2004 re-design of the
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...
in New York.


Notable works

* 193
Hydraulics Laboratory Tokyo Technical Institute
Tokyo * 193

* 1947 Memorial Hall for Toson Shimazaki, Magome, Gifu * 194
Keio University: Student Hall & Third School Building, Tokyo
* 195

* 1952 Ishikawa Textile Center, Kanazawa City * 195
Chichibu Cement Factory
Saitama * 1958 Tokyo Tech 70t
Anniversary Auditorium
(Cultural Asset), Tokyo * 1958 Komoro City Fujimura Memorial Hall, Nagano * 1958 Hara Kei Memorial Museum, Morioka City, Iwate * 1959 Ishikawa Traditional Crafts Center, Kanazawa City * 1959 Chidorigafuchi War Memorial Rokkakudo, Tokyo * 1959 Togu Palace, Tokyo * 1962
Hotel Okura is an international hotel chain with locations mainly in Japan. The original Hotel Okura Tokyo, Hotel Okura opened in Tokyo in 1962. The Okura Hotels & Resorts worldwide chain includes Okura Hotels in, among other places, Amsterdam, Shanghai, H ...
, Tokyo * 1962 Bunkyo Ogai Memorial Library, Tokyo * 1966 Yamatane Art Museum, Tokyo * 1966 Imperial Theater, Tokyo * 1968
Tokyo National Museum The or TNM is an art museum in Ueno Park in the Taitō wards of Tokyo, ward of Tokyo, Japan. It is one of the four museums operated by the , is considered the oldest national museum and the largest art museum in Japan. The museum collects, prese ...
Toyokan Building, Tokyo * 1968 San Francisco Peace Pagoda, San Francisco, CA, USA * 1969 National Museum of Modern Art ( MOMAT), Tokyo * 1974 Imperial Guest House, Tokyo - Restoration * 1977 Crafts Gallery of National Museum of Modern Art - Restoration * 1978 Tamagawa Library, Kanazawa City - Restoration * 1978 Aichi Prefectural Ceramic Museum,
Seto, Aichi is a Cities of Japan, city in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 127,659 in 56,573 households, and a population density of 1,146 persons per km2. The total area was . Geography Seto is located in the hilly northe ...
* 1983 Reimeikan Museum, Kagoshima - (Posthumous)


Footnotes


References

* Arai, Katsuyoshi in Emanuel, Muriel ED (1980). Contemporary Architects. London, England: The Macmillan Press LTD. . * Kultermann, Udo (1960). New Japanese Architecture. New York, NY, USA: Praeger. ASIN B0007DNXMW. * Noffsinger, James Philip Ph.D. (1981). Yoshiro Taniguchi: Artist-Architect of Japan. Vance Bibliographies Architecture Series. Monticello, IL, USA: Vance Bibliographies. OL 17843875M. * Sugiyama, Makiko (2006). Banraisha: A Poetic Architecture by Yoshiro Taniguchi and Isamu Noguchi. Tokyo, Japan: Kajima Institute Publishing Company. . * Taniguchi, Yoshirō (1956). The Shugakuin Imperial Villa. Tokyo, Japan: The Mainichi Newspapers Press. . * Watanabe, Hiroshi (2001). The Architecture of Tokyo: An Architectural History in 571 Individual Presentations. Fellbach, Germany: Edition Axel Menges. . * “The Architects: Japan”. The Architectural Review. London: EMAP Publishing LTD (787). September 1962. ISSN 0003-861X. * “Yoshiro Taniguchi and His Work”. The Japan Architect. Japan: Shinkenchiku-sha. May 1966. ISSN 0448-8512. {{DEFAULTSORT:Taniguchi, Yoshiro 20th-century Japanese architects 1904 births 1979 deaths People from Kanazawa, Ishikawa Academic staff of Tokyo Institute of Technology University of Tokyo alumni