The Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi has received the Piranesi Prix de Rome 2016 career award, at the sixth edition this year. The prestigious award was established by the Adrinea Academy of Architecture and Archaeology in order to reward the best design architects of museums and interventions for the promotion of the cultural and archaeological heritage: among them, Rafael Moneo, David Chipperfield, Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi.
Jointly organized by the Order of Architects of Rome, the Adrinea Academy of Architecture and Archaeology and the Italy Japan Foundation, the award ceremony was held in Rome on March 18 and this year is among the events celebrating the 150th anniversary of relations between Japan and Italy.
Son of the famous architect Yoshiro, Yoshio Taniguchi was born in Tokyo in 1937. He studied first in his native town, then in the United States, at Harvard. For more than ten years he has been collaborating with Kenzo Tange studio.
Specialized in the realization of museums and public buildings - such as the Shiseido Art House, the photographic Ken Domon Museum, Sea Life Park aquarium in Tokyo, the art Municipal Museum of Toyota and Horyuji Gallery in the National Museum of Tokyo – Taniguchi reveals in his works a clear opening to newness, besides revealing its connection with Modern Movement formal tradition. Supporter of a sophisticated minimalism, thanks to the use of simple lines creating illusory effects, his ability to maximize light and space and his refined, delicate sense of beauty, in 1997 Taniguchi won the contest for the extension of one of the most important museums in the world, the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA). Moreover, Taniguchi has designed other important museums, such as the Kagawa Art Museum, the Kasai Rinkai Park Visitor Center, the Kyoto National Museum and the Suzuki Daisetsu Museum.
At present, master Taniguchi is involved in the rebuilding of the Okura Hotel - built in the sixties by his father Yoshiro, harking back to western standards while maintaining the characteristic features of Japanese aesthetics - and in the design of the “Ginza 6-chome”, the requalification of two blocks in the elegant Ginza district with the construction of the largest and most sophisticated multipurpose building ever made in Japan.
