Yoshio Taniguchi, architect of MoMA expansion, passed away 87

Yoshio Taniguchi (Tokyo, 17 October 1937 – 16 December 2024). Taniguchi’s maternal grandfather was one of Japan’s earliest architects and later became the head of the Tokyo branch of a major construction company. Taniguchi’s father, Yoshirō Taniguchi (1904–1979), was a contemporary of Kunio Maekawa and a respected architect in his own right.

He studied engineering at Keio University, graduating in 1960, after which he 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.

While at Harvard, Taniguchi met Kenzo Tange, and he joined Tange’s office and his Tokyo University research laboratory on his return to Japan in 1965, staying with the firm until 1972. He worked on projects in Skopje, Yugoslavia, and San Francisco, California (Yerba Buena), living on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley while involved in the latter project. Taniguchi taught architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles, then, in 1975, established his practice, in Tokyo. Since 1979, was president of Taniguchi and Associates.

Taniguchi works frequently with graphic designers, sculptors, and other artists, such as Gen’ichiro Inokuma and the tea master Hiroshi Teshigahara. Taniguchi collaborated with sculptor Isamu Noguchi and was a board of the Noguchi Foundation. The landscape architect Peter Walker also worked with Taniguchi, designing the IBM Makuhari Building (1991), the Marugame Museum of Contemporary Art (1991), and the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art (1995).

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

Among his most significant awards are the 2005 Praemium Imperiale and the Person of Cultural Merit in 2021.