The Architecture of Yoshio Taniguchi
Having one's work included among the many items in the design collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art is a major honor for any product designer or manufacturer. For architects, the Modern club is very exclusive: only five of them have ever designed buildings for MoMA. Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi is the latest, and the first non-American. He bested nine carefully picked peers in a design competition in 1998, and his project is slated for completion in 2004.Taniguchi is not yet well known in the U.S., and this handsome, large-format book is one of the first English-language explorations of his career. It presents 18 buildings and projects through short introductions, generous color photos, and rather small line drawings. The son of an architect, Taniguchi studied mechanical engineering in Tokyo and architecture at Harvard. His works typically exhibit directness, clarity, and fine-honed sparseness. At their best--as in the brilliantly planned and boldly structured Kanazawa Library, or the magically transparent Kasai Rinkai Park visitors center--their virtues are obvious, but other projects may need a visit to reveal their essence fully. Indeed, parts of some of the projects appear rather ordinary, and one, the IBM Makuhari Technical Center, seems to flirt with banality.There is always an inherent difficulty in compressing the large-scale, space-time experience of architecture into book form. This volume does struggle with this problem, but the elegant design mirrors Taniguchi's ordered and understated aesthetic. An introduction by architect Fumihiko Maki and an autobiographical essay by Taniguchi enhance the reader's understanding of this subtle and meticulous designer.--John Pastier