Yoshio Taniguchi

MOMA New York Courtyard, from the Café 5 terrace after remodel by architect Yoshio Taniguchi

Yoshio Taniguchi (谷口 吉生, Taniguchi Yoshio; born 1937) is a Japanese architect best known for his redesign of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City which was reopened November 20, 2004.

Biography

Taniguchi is the son of architect Yoshirō Taniguchi (1904–1979). He studied engineering at Keio University, graduating in 1960, and studied architecture at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, graduating in 1964. He worked briefly for architect Walter Gropius, who became an important influence.

From 1964 to 1972, Taniguchi worked for the studio of architect Kenzo Tange, who was perhaps the most important Japanese modernist architect, at Tokyo University. While in the Tange office, Taniguchi also worked on projects in Skopje, Yugoslavia and San Francisco, California (Yerba Buena), living on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley while involved in the latter project. Important later collaborators include Isamu Noguchi, American landscape architect Peter Walker, and artist Genichiro Inokuma.

Taniguchi is best known for designing a number of Japanese museums, including the Nagano Prefectural Museum, the Marugame Genichiro Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, the D.T. Suzuki Museum (鈴木大拙館, Suzuki Daisetsu Kan) in Kanazawa, and the Gallery of the Hōryū-ji Treasures at the Tokyo National Museum.

Taniguchi won a competition in 1997 to redesign the Museum of Modern Art, beating out nine other internationally renowned architects, including Rem Koolhaas, Bernard Tschumi, and Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. The MoMA commission was Taniguchi's first work outside Japan.

Taniguchi designed the Texas Asia Society Center in Houston. This $40 million project is located in the Houston Museum District and is Taniguchi's first free-standing new building in the United States.

Awards

• 2005 : Praemium Imperiale

Gallery of works

• 
  MoMA, New York
• 
  Tokyo Sea Life Park, Tokyo
• 
  Tokyo Sea Life Park, Tokyo
• 
  The Gallery of Horyuji Treasures, Tokyo
• 
  Kagawa Prefectural Higashiyama Kaii Setouchi Art Museum, Sakaide

Further reading

• Dana Buntrock. "Yoshio Taniguchi: master of minimalism." Architecture, October 1996.

External links

Media related to Yoshio Taniguchi at Wikimedia Commons

• Museum of Modern Art biography
• "Talking with Taniguchi". C.B.Liddell. 2008-02-13.