The Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, winner of the Pritzker Prize in 2019, has died this Wednesday, at the age of 91, in Okinawa (southwest), Japanese media reported this Friday.
Upon receiving the Pritzker, Isozaki said that interest in the discipline was born from the way in which architecture and a city can be built from the impact site of an explosion.
A prolific and cosmopolitan architect, he was characterized by never seeking to impose a particular style, but rather integrating his buildings into the environment as best he could.
“My pleasure is to create different things, not repeat the same thing,” he explained, in November 2017, to the specialized ArchDaily ‘site’.
Among the best-known works are the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (1986), which launched the architect’s international career, the multipurpose Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona, built for the 1992 Olympic Games, and the Convention Center from Qatar (2011). , in Doha, with gigantic columns in the shape of tree branches.
He also built numerous cultural buildings in Japan and China, luxury apartments in Bilbao (Spain), the colorful administrative headquarters of Disney in Florida and the Allianz Tower in Milan (2015), also known as the “Isozaki Tower”.
Born in 1931 in Oita, on the island of Kyushu (southwest), Isozaki was marked, like his entire generation, by World War II, during which most Japanese cities were destroyed by US bombing.
“Everything was in ruins (…). It was only surrounded by huts and shelters. So my first experience of architecture was the absence of architecture, and I started to think about how people could rebuild houses and cities,” he said. .
He grew up between Japanese traditionalism and the influence of American culture, brought to the Japanese archipelago during the post-war occupation. This led him to take an early interest in the contrasting aesthetic codes of the East and the West, and to want to build bridges between the two.
He worked with the Japanese modernist architect Kenzo Tange before creating his own firm in 1963, which later opened offices in Spain, Italy and China.
Source: TSF
