Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki, who designed buildings including 4 World Trade Center and was one of the founders of metabolism, has died aged 95.

Maki, who won the Pritzker Architecture Prize and the AIA Gold Medal, passed away on 6 June due to old age, reported the Japan Times.

Trained at both the University of Tokyo and Harvard University, Maki’s work combined western and eastern influences and varied greatly in style.

“He is a modernist who has fused the best of both eastern and western cultures to create an architecture representing the age-old qualities of his native country while at the same time juxtaposing contemporary construction methods and materials,” wrote the jury in his Pritzker Architecture Prize citation.

“There is amazing diversity in his work—from the awesome Nippon Convention Center near Tokyo with its man-made mountain range of stainless steel roofs to his earlier and smaller YKK Guest House or a planned orphan village in Poland.”

Born in 1928 in Tokyo, Maki studied architecture in the city before moving to the USA to continue his studies. After graduating from Harvard, he took a teaching position at Washington University in St Louis, where he designed his first building – the  Steinberg Hall arts centre – for the institution.

In the 1960s, he returned to Japan to help launch the metabolism movement and establish his studio Maki and Associates in Tokyo.

Throughout the 20th century he designed numerous, significant buildings in Japan including the Osaka Prefectural Sports Center, Fujisawa Gymnasium and Makuhari Messe convention centre as well as the Hillside Terrace Apartments, which was completed over a period of 25 years.

In recent years he has completed several significant international buildings including an expansion to the UN in New York and the 72-storey 4 World Trade Center skyscraper in the city.

In Toronto he designed a white granite museum for the Aga Khan Foundation, while in London, the Aga Khan Centre opened in London’s King’s Cross in 2018.

Maki was recognised with architecture’s highest honours including winning the Pritzker Architecture Prize for his building “that are not only expressions of his time, but that are destined to survive mere fashion” in 1993, and the AIA Gold Medal in 2011.

The main photo is by jeanbaptisteparis.

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