Arata Isozaki has died – and it looks as if, without him, the visionary times of modern architecture are only now coming to an end.
“City in the Air” was the name of his most spectacular project, built in the early 1960s to celebrate the Olympic Games in Tokyo: the residential units hung on huge concrete pillars like leaves or mistletoe;
that should free up space on the ground and bring people closer to heaven.
And in fact there are plans that could not be realized then, everything looks even more futuristic than if architecture could overcome gravity.
Claudius Seidl
Editor in the Feuilleton.
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Isozaki, born in 1931, belonged to the post-war generation that wanted not just to rebuild Japan, but to reshape it.
And like any true modernist, Isozaki began by studying his own traditions before building in California, Berlin, Barcelona and Milan.
His most famous buildings include the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Palau San Jordi in Barcelona, the tomb of the composer Luigi Nono in Venice and the Allianz Tower in Milan.
In 2019 Isozaki was awarded the Pritzker Prize.
More than space and time, he repeatedly said, he was interested in the spaces and the times in between;
it's a phrase best pondered on the top floor of an Isozaki home.
On Wednesday the man who knew that all architecture begins with thought structures died.
He was 91 years old.