13. February 2018
Photo: Screenshot
Fumihiko Maki, the Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect, spoke with PLANE—SITE in the fifth video of a series leading up to the GAA Foundation's Time-Space-Existence exhibition, planned as a collateral exhibition of the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale.
Maki and Associates is located in Tokyo in Hillside West, the seventh phase of the architect's ambitious Hillside Terrace development, made up of office, retail, and housing. Having spent three decades working on it, the project is indicative of Maki's patience but also his modesty; the latter comes across though the buildings' forms as well as the way they insert themselves sensitively into their urban surroundings.
In the short film recorded in Maki's office, the architect admits how he avoids "unnecessary, complicated forms and textures" in his buildings – it is the the discipline he puts upon himself. Maki also reveals how he designs for human behavior, what came out of working with the great Kenzo Tange, and what, if anything, makes his architecure "Japanese."
ABOUT THE INTERVIEW SERIES
PLANE—SITE is producing a new series of videos, featuring protagonists from within the global architecture discourse. The video series will be exhibited in Palazzo Bembo and Palazzo Mora as part of the GAA Foundation's Time-Space-Existence exhibition, opening in May 2018. World-Architects is serving as media partner for the Time-Space-Existence video series, which will see at least one new video per month until the exhibition's opening. The interview series has been made possible with the support of the European Cultural Centre.