In memory of Fumihiko Maki
The Japanese architect and Pritzker Prize winner died on 6 June 2024 at the age of 95
Wiesbaden, 11 June 2024 – The team at the Museum Reinhard Ernst (mre) was deeply saddened by the news of the death of Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki. The Pritzker Prize winner died on 6 June 2024 at his home in Tokyo. He was 95 years old. The Museum Reinhard Ernst in Wiesbaden, which is about to open, is Fumihiko Maki's tenth museum building and his only one in Europe.
"With Fumihiko Maki, the world is losing an outstanding architect, and I am losing a very good friend. No other architect was ever considered for the Museum Reinhard Ernst. Fumihiko Maki was involved in this project from the very first drawing. Maki followed the completion of our museum from afar, I regularly sent him photos and we often spoke on the phone. My wife and I are very sad that he will no longer be able to see the opening," says Reinhard Ernst, founder of the museum.
Reinhard Ernst and Fumihiko Maki dates back to 2002: "Maki and Associates designed Triad, at the headquarters of Harmonic Drive in Nagano, our Japanese sister company. Ten years later, after the devastating floods of the 2011 tsunami, we realised our first joint project, the House of Hope, a multi-use community space in Natori City, Miyagi Prefecture, within a very short space of time," recalls Reinhard Ernst.
"When planning our museum, we were actually always in agreement - our aesthetic preferences coincided, as did our love of detail. It was a great pleasure to exchange ideas with him. I was particularly impressed by his philosophy: Fumihiko Maki believed that a building is always most sustainable when it is accepted and loved by the community for which it was built. I am certain that with the mre, we have built a museum that will win the hearts of its visitors."
Born 1928 in Tokyo, Fumihiko Maki began his studies at the age of 20 at the University of Tokyo. Together with Arata Isozaki and Kisho Kurokawa, the three studied under Kenzo Tange in his Laboratory. They were known as the “three crows.”
After completing his bachelor's degree in 1952, Maki pursued his graduate studies at the Cranbook Academy of Arts in Michigan, then transferred to Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 1953 where he obtained his Master’s degree. Upon graduation he worked at the office of Skidmore Owings & Merrill in New York then at Sert Jackson in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Maki received his first teaching assignment at Washington University in St. Louis whereupon, he designed his first building, Steinberg Hall, in 1960 at the age of 32.
Upon returning to Japan in 1965, Fumihiko Maki founded his own firm Maki and Associates in Tokyo. Today the firm is headed by Gary Kamemoto. The office has been involved in a wide range of projects: academic buildings, libraries, sports and community centres, high-rise buildings, residential projects and museums. One of his landmark buildings is 4 World Trade Centre in New York, which was completed in 2013.
In 1993, Fumihiko Maki was the second Japanese architect after his teacher Tange to be awarded the Pritzker Prize.
From 23 June 2024 to 9 February 2025, the mre is showcasing its first special exhibition titled Fumihiko Maki - Maki and Associates: Towards Humane Architecture It exhibits Maki‘s outstanding projects, including 4 World Trade Centre in New York, the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in California (1993) and the National Museum of Modern Art Kyoto (1986).
In 1985, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of his architecture firm Maki & Associates, Fumihiko Maki quipped about designing 10 museums in his career. Almost 40 years later, the Museum Reinhard Ernst is honouring its architect and the firm he founded with this exhibition, which also tells the ‘making of’ the mre as the tenth museum. It reveals the ethical and social principles that Fumihiko Maki shares with Reinhard Ernst and that have connected them as friends for a long time: ‘Museum building is community building’.
