Yoshio Taniguchi

After the international dimension that his figure has gained as a result of having carried out the expansion of the New York MoMA, Yoshio Taniguchi has been awarded an imperial praemium, being the fourth Japanese architect to receive this important artistic award granted in his country by the Japan Art Association. Born in Tokyo in 1937, he graduated from Keio University with a degree in architecture and mechanical engineering, and went on to do postgraduate work at Harvard. Walter Gropius, with whom he came into contact there, and Kenzo Tange, in whose studio he worked before founding his own firm in 1975, are two figures of reference in his professional biography, characterized by the balanced confluence between construction and nature. He is a prolific author of buildings for museums, including the Shiseido in Kakegawa (1978), the Higashiyama Kaii in Nagano (1990), the Marugame Genichiro Inokuma (1991), the Toyota Art Museum (1995) and the Horuji Gallery of the National Museum of Tokyo (1999), Taniguchi has received this recognition along with Robert Ryman, Issey Miyake, Martha Argerich and Merce Cunningham, designated respectively in the categories of painting, sculpture, music and performing arts.