Kunio Maekawa

Kunio Maekawa (°Niigata, 14 May 1905 – †Tokyo, 26 June 1986) was a Japanese architect and a key figure of modern Japanese architecture.

Kunio Mayekawa entered First Tokyo Middle School in 1918, and then Tokyo Imperial University in 1925. After graduation in 1928, he travelled to France to apprentice with Le Corbusier. In 1930 he returned to Japan and worked with Antonin Raymond (a student of Frank Lloyd Wright), and in 1935 established his own office Mayekawa Kunio Associates. His own house has been described as his starting point, in which he brought the idea of piloti inside the house, to create a two-storey space. The original house has been dismantled and relocated to the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum.

In 1955 he designed and build his first project: the Kanagawa Concert Hall and Library. His perhaps most famous work, the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, located in Tokyo’s Ueno Park was completed in 1961. The building contains a main, large concert hall, a recital hall, as well as a rehearsal room and a music library.