The architect and professor Kazuhiro Kojima passed away at the age of 57 in Tokyo on 13 October 2016. Born in Osaka in 1958, Kojima studied architecture in Kyoto and Tokyo. In 1986 he set up Coelacanth Architects, which in 2005, with Kazuko Akamatsu, was reorganized as CAt (C+A Tokyo). That same year Kojima participated in ‘Extreme Eurasia,’ an exhibition held in Tokyo with Luis Fernández-Galiano as curator. Together with the Spanish Pavilion at Expo Aichi 2005, it wove a network of links between Spanish and Japanese architects that fostered knowledge exchange and reciprocal learning.

The Himuro House earned him, at 26, the Kashima Award, and in 1990 he won the international competition to build the Osaka International Peace Center. His interest in the relationship between activity and space is reflected in projects like the Utase Elementary School, the Space Blocks Kamishinjo, and the Hanoi Model, a residential prototype built in 2003. In 2013 his firm landed the Murano Prize for the Uto Elementary School, and in 2016 came the award given by the Architectural Institution of Japan (AIJ), for the Nagareyama Otakanomori Elementary and Junior High School. As a professor, he taught at the Tokyo University of Science from 2005 to 2011, and at the Yokohama Graduate School of Architecture (Y-GSA) from 2011 until his death on 13 October 2016.