The Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, archistar of utopian-programmatic projects, author of more than one hundred buildings in Asia, Europe, America and Australia, died today in Tokyo at the age of 91. In 2019 he had received the prestigious Pritzker Prize, considered the Nobel of architecture, while in 1996 he received the Golden Lion at the Venice International Architecture Exhibition. Confirmation of his disappearance was given by a spokesman for his study to the Spanish press and the Efe agency. A prolific architect, but also a committed theorist, Arata Isozaki actively participated in the post-war reconstruction process, contributing to the radical modernization of Japan. Independent and anticipator of new trends, his architecture is heterogeneous, characterized by various phases, from extreme experimentation to the historicizing taste for quotation. Isozaki has operated under the banner of a fertile exchange between Eastern and Western debate. His name became known to the general public in Italy for one of his projects which in 1998 won the international tender for the new monumental exit of the Uffizi in Florence, which was completed up to the executive project, but not realised. Since then it has been the subject of controversy and controversy: in recent weeks the Undersecretary of Culture Vittorio Sgarbi has repeated several times that the project will not be implemented by the new government. In Italy, where the Arata Isozaki & Andrea Maffei Associati studio opened in Milan in 2005, he has carried out urban redevelopment projects aimed at redesigning the scenarios of some districts, among them: the Pirelli area in Milan (2001); the Turin Olympic hockey rink (2002-06); the Milan City Life trade fair (since 2004). He also won the competitions for the construction of the new central station of Bologna (2008), the headquarters of the Province of Bergamo (2009), the municipal library of Maranello (2011). Isozaki also designed the Allianz Tower (nicknamed the Dritto) with Andrea Maffei, the Citylife skyscraper in Milan flanked by the Storto and the Curvo.
Among the numerous and heterogeneous achievements of the 21st century by Isozaki are the cultural center of Shenzhen in China (1997-2003); the cultural center in Shizouka in Japan (2000); the Qatar National Library (2002); Weill Cornell Medical College (2004) in Doha; the Museum of Contemporary Art (2003) in Beijing; the Hotel Puerta America (2004-05) in Madrid. Among Isozaki’s many architectural achievements are the Oita Medical Center (1961-66); the Skopje City Expansion Plan (1965-66) on which he worked as a Tange staff member; a series of branches of the Sogo Bank of Fukuoka (Headquarters, Tokyo, Nagasumi, Saga, Ropponmatsu) executed between 1968 and 1973; the Museum of Modern Art of Gumma Prefecture (1972-74); the Kitakyushu City Museum of Art and Central Library (1972-74); the Shuko-sha building in Fukuoka (1974-75); the West Japan General Exhibition Center (1975-77); the Kaijima house in Tokyo (1976-77); Kamioka City Hall (1976-78); the Hayashi house near Fukuoka (1977); the Oita Audiovisual Center (1977-79); the Nippon Electric Glass Co.Ltd building in Otsu (1977-80); the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (1981-86); the San Jordi Sports Palace in Barcelona (1984-90); the Art Tower in Mito-Ibaragi (1986-90); the Kitakyushu Conference Center (1987-90). Born in Oita (Kyushu island) on July 23, 1931, Isozaki graduated from the University of Tokyo, then worked with Kenzo Tange from 1954 to 1963, the year in which he opened his studio (Arata Isozaki Atelier) in Tokyo . He has held cycles of lectures in various American universities and his works have been exhibited in numerous architecture exhibitions in various parts of the world. Winner of national and international awards (in 1986 he had obtained the gold medal of Riba, the Royal Institute of British Architects) he was a member of the Building Council of Japan, an honorary member of the Accademia Tiberina in Rome, of the American Institute of Architects, of the Bund Deutscher Architekten and Knight of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic.
Anticipated by the interest in the theme of ruins (an echo of the destruction of Hiroshima is the Electric Labyrinth exhibited at the Milan Triennale in 1968), the first phase of Isozaki’s activity is characterized by utopian-programmatic projects in line with the positions of the group English Archigram and with the proposals of the Japanese group Metabolism. The various drawings of the Aerial City are emblematic: in particular the two that propose the city as the result of a dialectical comparison between vertical cylindrical elements, to which the aerial structures of the settlement fabric are attached, and the landscapes of archaeological ruins or pre-existing but indistinct urban fabrics. Numerous explicit or implicit references to architects of the “early modern age” or the early years of the 20th century are evident (from A. Loos to Le Corbusier, etc.). But the combinatorial syntax of elementary volumes is equally evident (above all the cube and the cylinder), developed along linear, curvilinear, sinusoidal, winding lines and generators.