With a broad trajectory outside his country, Arata Isozaki, is one of the most well-known architects of the panorama of contemporary architecture, the current award is a recognition that should have come a long time ago. Arata Isozaki, born in Ōita, Island of Kyushu, Japan in 1931, is about to turn 90 years old. Next we list ten things, so that you can quickly locate and recognize the work of the new Pritzker Prize 2019.
1. World War II, as for every Japanese of his generation, was a determining factor in his life and in his approach to architecture. At the age of 12 he witnessed the bombings of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which would condition his vision on the temporality of architecture and the importance of giving real-time answers to users who live and experience architecture.
2. “I wanted to see the world through my own eyes, so I traveled around the globe at least ten times before I turned thirty. I wanted to feel the life of people in different places and travelled extensively inside Japan, but also to the Islamic world, villages in the deep mountains of China, South East Asia, and metropolitan cities in the U.S. I was trying to find any opportunities to do so, and through this, I kept questioning, ‘what is architecture?”, Arata Isozaki in Pritzker Announcement.
3. He was influenced by the metabolists in his early years, after starting his career as an apprentice with Kenzo Tange in the late 1950s. Rem Koolhaas picked up his work in the book Project Japan.
4. In his 1961 project City in the Air, he presents his vision for a multilayered city which hovers over the traditional city. It consisted of elevated layers of buildings, residences and transportation suspended above the aging city below, in response to the rapid rate of urbanization.
5. He designed a 'Demonstration Robot' for the 1970 Osaka Expo, housed under Kenzo Tange's Festival Plaza space frame. The two heads of the robot worked as control rooms, one of them receiving external data and sending it to the next one, which sent instructions to emit smoke, smells, light, and sounds. The robot's body would rise and its base would then become a performance stage.
6. He carried out extensive efforts to physically reconstruct his native hometown with buildings including Ōita Medical Hall (1959-60) and Annex (1970-1972 Ōita, Japan), and the Ōita Prefectural Library (1962-1966 Ōita, Japan, renamed Ōita Art Plaza in 1996).
7. During the 70s and 80s, his third wife, the Japanese sculptor Aiko Miyawaki (1929-2014), influenced the work, the shapes and the spatial vision of Arata Isozaki. Works by Aiko Miyawaki as Utsuroi sculpture for MA-Espace/Temps, created the landscape around MOMA Gunma building by Arata Isozaki. (See below).
8. During the 80's Arata Isozaki was a main postmodern figure between Japanese architects, developed many important Postmodern projects, some of then are in USA, as Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (1986) and the Team Disney Building in Florida (1991).
9. Isozaki has built more than 100 architectural projects around the world, many of them in Spain (Isozaki Atea in Bilbao, Caixa Forum in Barcelona, Sport center in Palafolls), including significant buildings as Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona, and Domus museum, in A Coruña.
10. In 2011, together with the artist Anish Kapoor, Isozaki developed the inflatable structure Ark Nova, a inflatable pink ball for concerts, shows, exhibitions, to host Lucerne festival. A project designed to bring hope to regions afflicted by the earthquake and tsunami that occurred in in East Japan.
2. “I wanted to see the world through my own eyes, so I traveled around the globe at least ten times before I turned thirty. I wanted to feel the life of people in different places and travelled extensively inside Japan, but also to the Islamic world, villages in the deep mountains of China, South East Asia, and metropolitan cities in the U.S. I was trying to find any opportunities to do so, and through this, I kept questioning, ‘what is architecture?”, Arata Isozaki in Pritzker Announcement.
3. He was influenced by the metabolists in his early years, after starting his career as an apprentice with Kenzo Tange in the late 1950s. Rem Koolhaas picked up his work in the book Project Japan.
4. In his 1961 project City in the Air, he presents his vision for a multilayered city which hovers over the traditional city. It consisted of elevated layers of buildings, residences and transportation suspended above the aging city below, in response to the rapid rate of urbanization.
5. He designed a 'Demonstration Robot' for the 1970 Osaka Expo, housed under Kenzo Tange's Festival Plaza space frame. The two heads of the robot worked as control rooms, one of them receiving external data and sending it to the next one, which sent instructions to emit smoke, smells, light, and sounds. The robot's body would rise and its base would then become a performance stage.
6. He carried out extensive efforts to physically reconstruct his native hometown with buildings including Ōita Medical Hall (1959-60) and Annex (1970-1972 Ōita, Japan), and the Ōita Prefectural Library (1962-1966 Ōita, Japan, renamed Ōita Art Plaza in 1996).
7. During the 70s and 80s, his third wife, the Japanese sculptor Aiko Miyawaki (1929-2014), influenced the work, the shapes and the spatial vision of Arata Isozaki. Works by Aiko Miyawaki as Utsuroi sculpture for MA-Espace/Temps, created the landscape around MOMA Gunma building by Arata Isozaki. (See below).
8. During the 80's Arata Isozaki was a main postmodern figure between Japanese architects, developed many important Postmodern projects, some of then are in USA, as Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (1986) and the Team Disney Building in Florida (1991).
9. Isozaki has built more than 100 architectural projects around the world, many of them in Spain (Isozaki Atea in Bilbao, Caixa Forum in Barcelona, Sport center in Palafolls), including significant buildings as Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona, and Domus museum, in A Coruña.
10. In 2011, together with the artist Anish Kapoor, Isozaki developed the inflatable structure Ark Nova, a inflatable pink ball for concerts, shows, exhibitions, to host Lucerne festival. A project designed to bring hope to regions afflicted by the earthquake and tsunami that occurred in in East Japan.
