Kurokawa, Kisho

▪ 2008

Noriaki Kurokawa  Japanese architect

born April 8, 1934, Nagoya, Japan

died Oct. 12, 2007, Tokyo, Japan

was a cofounder (1960) of the Metabolist movement, a Japanese-based group of radical architects, and emerged during the 1960s and '70s as one of the group's most radical members. He studied architecture under Kenzo Tange at the University of Tokyo (M.A., 1959; Ph.D., 1964) after receiving his undergraduate degree from Kyoto University in 1957). Believing in a machine-age aesthetic, the Metabolists favoured prefabrication and mass-produced architectural elements. Kurokawa became an advocate for buildings with a central core onto which modules and capsules could be attached. He realized this organic view of architecture in buildings such as the Nakagin Capsule Tower (1970–72) in Tokyo and the Sony Tower (1972–76) in Osaka. In the 1980s Kurokawa lost interest in the radically futuristic aspects of the Metabolist movement and sought to create work with a deeper sense of meaning. When he built the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (1988–89), it was the first art museum built there since World War II. From the late 1980s, Kurokawa increasingly received international commissions, including Melbourne Central (1986–91), an office and retail space in Australia; the Sporting Club (1987–90) in Chicago; and an addition to the Van Gogh Museum (1990–98) in Amsterdam. In his later work he emphasized that buildings could have a multiplicity of influences, a philosophy given form in his design for the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (1992–98). Kurokawa's numerous books on architecture included Metabolism in Architecture (1977), Rediscovering Japanese Space (1988), and Kisho Kurokawa: From the Age of the Machine to the Age of Life (1998).

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