Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi and English designer Jasper Morrison have been selected to receive the second annual Isamu Noguchi Award. Presented by The Noguchi Museum, the award recognizes “kindred spirits in innovation, global consciousness, and Japanese/American exchange.”
“We are thrilled to present the second annual Isamu Noguchi Award to Jasper Morrison and Yoshio Taniguchi, whose visionary work and extraordinary contributions in the fields of design and architecture exemplify Noguchi’s lifelong commitment to world citizenship and the practice of art with a social purpose,” stated Jenny Dixon, Director of The Noguchi Museum.
More on Taniguchi's selection, after the break.
Yoshio Taniguchi was introduced to Noguchi at a young age by his father, Yoshiro (1904–1979), who was also a prominent architect and collaborated with the artist on the Shin Banraisha, a room and garden located on the ground floor of a building at Keio University. Noguchi was close friends with both father and son, and became an avuncular mentor to the younger Taniguchi.
After establishing his own architecture firm in 1979, Yoshio Taniguchi collaborated with Noguchi on his first museum project in 1984: the Ken Domon Museum of Photography, Japan’s inaugural photography museum that houses the collection of the renowned Japanese photographer. Taniguchi designed four other major museums in Japan before redesigning the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2004. Since then, he has worked on significant projects in Switzerland, the United States, and most recently on the Heisei Chishinkan Wing, a new addition to the Kyoto National Museum, Japan.
Among a handful of global architects known for taking an understated approach to museum design, Taniguchi excels in creating spaces with a humility and elegance that allows the art contained within to stand on its own. A master of imbuing his projects with a humane and universal refinement, he credits his sensitivity to the relationship between objects and spaces in part to his friendship with Noguchi. This quality of spatial serenity is highly evident in Noguchi’s own designs for his homes, studios, and of course in The Noguchi Museum.
With compatriots such as Tadao Ando and Arata Isozaki— also friends of Noguchi’s—Taniguchi has been an enormously important conduit for Japanese aesthetics in the West.
Motohide Yoshikawa, Ambassador of Japan to the United Nations, will present the award during a special ceremony at The Noguchi Museum’s annual Spring Benefit on Tuesday, May 19, 2015. This event is part of a year of celebratory programming in honor of the 30th anniversary of the Museum’s founding by Isamu Noguchi.
News via The Noguchi Museum.
