Yoshio Taniguchi - Biography

Biography

Taniguchi is the son of architect Yoshirō Taniguchi (1904-1979). He studied engineering at Keio University, graduating in 1960, and 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.

From 1964 to 1972, Taniguchi worked for the studio of architect Kenzo Tange, who was perhaps the most important Japanese modernist architect, at Tokyo University. While in the Tange office, Taniguchi also worked on projects in Skopje, Yugoslavia and San Francisco, California (Yerba Buena), living on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley while involved in the latter project. Important later collaborators include Isamu Noguchi, American landscape architect Peter Walker, and artist Genichiro Inokuma. Taniguchi is best known for designing a number of Japanese museums, including the Nagano Prefectural Museum, the Marugame Genichiro Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, and the Gallery of the Hōryū-ji Treasures at the Tokyo National Museum.

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

Taniguchi has since won a commission to design the Asia House for the Texas branch of the Asia Society. This $40 million project will be located in Houston's museum district and will be Taniguchi's first free-standing new building in the United States.