A graduate of the University of Tokyo and Harvard Graduate School Design (GSD; MArch ’54), Fumihiko Maki was among the most distinguished Japanese architects of the past century. Yet, despite all his laurels and awards—the second Japanese recipient of the Pritzker Prize, after Kenzō Tange; the Praemium Imperiale; and the GSD’s own Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design—Maki-san was uniquely approachable, eager to listen and generous in sharing. Studying under Tange in Tokyo and then Josep Lluís Sert at the GSD, Maki’s intellectual formation coincided with the halcyon days of postwar reconstruction. While indebted to his teachers, both giants of this particular epoch of CIAM modernism, Maki came of age as part of the postwar cohort that strove for a more nuanced, sensitive view of the relationship between architecture and the urban environment, bringing him into the fold of the Team 10 group together with the likes of Jaap Bakema and Aldo van Eyck.[1]
Maki’s legacy to the world of architecture and urban design is undoubtedly his theorization of Group Form as a spatial idea, bringing together the scale of the room with that of the city while anticipating movement, even growth and change. A project that first began in 1967, not long after Maki’s return to Japan from the US, Hillside Terrace in Tokyo’s Daikanyama Neighborhood exemplifies Maki’s idea of Group Form. Evolving over a period of three decades, the project saw a series of internally coherent parcels that gradually extended along Tokyo’s Old Yamate Avenue, each articulated with a gentle, nuanced transition from the busy thoroughfare to quiet, intimate mixed-use spaces toward the back. Now more than a half century later, Hillside Terrace still exudes a remarkable sense of vitality and contemporaneity—celebrating the atmosphere and spatial qualities of a traditional residential neighborhood in a language that is unmistakably modern.
I first met Maki-san not long after arriving in Japan, in 2005, to begin my research on Tange. In those first months I talked to as many people as I could about Tange, Metabolism, and modern architecture in Japan in general. The vast majority of those I met simply repeated well-trodden, seemingly perfunctory tropes. That was not the case with Maki-san, who was easily the most distinguished figure I encountered. He showed genuine interest in first hearing why I was interested in Tange, and he went on to share stories of his time together with Tange, matter-of-factly. Maki spoke of his experiences as an undergraduate in Tange’s studio and subsequent interactions through the Metabolist Group and other occasions, such as at a dinner related to the Kennedy Presidential Library project, when he was seated between Tange and Paul Rudolph as something of a translator for his former mentor. More than any of the others I met, Maki had a profound appreciation for the global dimension of Tange’s work and understood the importance of making an architecture that is for the world.
Some years later, when I took up a teaching position at Washington University (WashU) in St. Louis, this connection with Maki-san was renewed. My favorite perk was my office on the second floor of Steinberg Hall, built in 1960 by the then 32-year-old Maki for the university art gallery and art and architecture library. Maki joined the faculty at WashU in 1956, staying until 1962 when he was called by his other mentor, Sert, to rejoin the GSD as a faculty member.
Maki’s urban formulation had its origins in the round-the-world travels he undertook in 1959–60, courtesy of a fellowship from the Graham Foundation. Rejecting earlier, modernist conceptions of urban assemblages as either Compositional Form or Mega Form, Group Form entailed a freer, more open, dynamic—even a democratic relationship—in the spatial arrangement of urban elements. He found inspiration in the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, hill towns of Greece and Italy, and charbaghs of Isfahan and Damascus.
The travel bug stayed with Maki his whole life, and he indulged in the anonymity and freedom of the solitary traveler. Unlike many other Japanese architects of his stature, Maki-san seldom traveled with an entourage, not even a kabanmochi, or briefcase carrier. The Graham travels had a profound impact on him, and he retained an almost childlike pleasure in planning his own business trips. This was mirrored in the daily routine that he continued well into his late eighties: walking from his home just south of Tokyo’s center to the local train station, taking the Yamanote Line to Shibuya, and then transferring to the neighborhood shuttle bus to his office in Daikanyama. The silhouette of Maki-san, wearing his dark navy blazer and walking in a light but determined gait, will forever be part of the mental scenery of Hillside Terrace, which he helped create.
[1] For more on Maki and Metabolism, see Fumihiko Maki, Investigations in Collective Form (St. Louis: School of Architecture, Washington University, 1964); and Eric Paul Mumford, Defining Urban Design: CIAM Architects and the Formation of a Discipline, 1937–69 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).