Arata Isozaki
..., Harvard University, and Columbia University as a visiting professor and also judge in main international competitions. Also active in lectures, symposiums, architecture exhibitions, fine-arts exhibitions, and private exhibitions all around the world. Japanese architect, b. Oita. One of his nation’s most important contemporary architects, he has an international reputation and has designed notable buildings in Asia, Europe, and the United States. He worked for Kenzo Tange (1954–63) before opening his own firm in 1963. Isozaki’s works combine a traditional Japanese sensibility with Western postmodernism, wittily employing complex asymmetrical forms, innovatively juxtaposed materials, eclectic formal borrowings from past styles, and technologically sophisticated details. Among his many buildings are the Oita Prefectural Library, Oita, Japan (1966); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1986); the New Tokyo City Hall (1986); Team Disney, Orlando, Fla. (1990); the Kyoto Concert Hall (1995); and the Center of Science and Industry, Columbus, Ohio (1999). Arata Isozaki graduated from the University of Tokio where he was a student of Kenzo Tange. He worked under Tange´s leadership till 1963 when he opened his own atelier. He is considered to be the leading figure in modern Japanese architecture. Arata Isozaki is the author of significant theoretical works. Many times he participated as a jury member in largest international competitions, for example, a competition for a design of Kansai airport (1988). He is the head of Nogizaka Atelier in Tokio, Japan. James Steele. "Architecture Today": His own professional growth Isozaki describes as a series of creative crises that regularly came at the beginning of each next decade. The symbol of his position of the 80s is Tsukuba Civic Centre where the author refers to everyone from Michelangelo and Leduc to Robert Venturi, Richard Meyer and Michael Graves. Isozaki wrote about this work: "My goal was to reveal an obvious integration of architectural styles and at the same time to present each style with such small fragments that at the moment when it seems that the style is totally destroyed, some schizophrenic stopper should appear when each fragment for...