Kunio Maekawa

Late career projects (1960s–1980s)

Maekawa took on a series of large-scale civic, cultural, and corporate projects during the latter half of his career, including the main building of the National Diet Library (1968) (the annex, also designed by Maekawa Kunio Associates, was completed in 1986), the Steel Pavilion at Expo '70 (1970), Saitama Prefectural Museum of History and Folklore (1971), Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Building (1974), Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum (1975), and the Miyagi Museum of Art (1981).

In contrast to his younger colleagues such as Kenzō Tange and those associated with the Metabolism movement, Maekawa displayed a reticence towards the megastructures and biomorphic forms that approached the rapid growth of technological modernity with exuberance, and expressed concerns over the capacity of machines to undermine human skill and artistry in architectural labor. At the same time, he maintained a consistently apolitical stance throughout the course of his career, in contrast to both his mentor Le Corbusier and other contemporaries in Japan—a decision that was surely driven by personal choice, but as Jonathan Reynolds suggests, also allowed him to remain in the good graces of the academy, authorities and other stakeholders who continued to provide him with large-scale commissions that played a central role in the transformation of urban landscapes in postwar Japan.

Use of uchikomi (cast-in-place) tiling

Many of Maekawa's projects from the 1960s onward feature extensive use of glazed tiles on facades and flooring, as seen in examples such as the Saitama Hall, the Saitama Prefectural Museum of History and Folklore, and in the annex of the National Diet Library, where the distinctive blue tile cladding provides a visual contrast against the bold concrete exterior of the main building and illustrates the architect's aesthetic developments over the course of his post-war career. During the later years of his career, Maekawa began to shift away from relying primarily on exposed concrete as the post-war decades had begun to reveal the vulnerabilities of the material to weathering and discoloration. He pioneered the use of uchikomi ("cast-in-place") tiles, which were set within wooden frames through which concrete was poured in, became a signature feature of late-career projects. The tiles provide structural support and textural dimension, while creating exteriors that are more resistant to deterioration. During his later years, Maekawa cited an increasing affinity towards William Morris' thinkings on material integrity and the value of aesthetically compelling functional goods, and his experimentation with different tiled facades and floors illustrates his keen engagement with the aesthetic dimensions of contemporary industrial production.

Tokio Marine & Nichido Building and the bikan ronso debate (1974)

As industrialization and economic growth progressed rapidly and urban centers swelled in size throughout the 1960s, the Tokyo skyline became increasingly punctuated by high-rise skyscrapers that signified the onset of a new era after the post-war period. In 1965, the Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Company announced that they would be constructing a new headquarters building in Marunouchi, Chiyoda, in proximity to the Imperial Palace of Tokyo. Maekawa was commissioned for the project, which was slated to have 30 floors and stand 127 meters high. Though the scale seems insignificant today considering Tokyo's high-rise laden skyline, buildings in the surrounding area at the time were limited to a height of just 31 meters due to the requirements of the prewar "aesthetic district" (bikan chiku) designation and the Building Standards Act enacted in 1950. In 1948, however, the bikan chiku system was suspended after its purposes were deemed unnecessary with the onset of the Building Standards Act (municipalities could later pursue this designation provided they establish a separate ordinance specific to their area).

Maekawa's design made use of colossal orders running up the length of the structure, which emphasized the verticality of the building and suppressed the windows to provide an illusion of greater height. This facade, along with the terracotta tiles that clad the building, nod to Louis Sullivan's Wainwright Building, as if to link Maekawa's break with urban tradition in Tokyo to the pioneering structure of the skyscraper genre.

Although the Tokyo Metropolitan Construction Review Board tried to shut down Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Company's proposal and revive the aesthetic district designation in order to protect the area, lack of consensus among the municipal assembly prevented the plan from materializing, allowing Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Company to move forward to with the project. The widely publicized back-and-forth surrounding the construction created what was termed the "aesthetics debate" (bikan ronso) as politicians, architects, and planners engaged in heated discourse over the symbolic and visual stakes of the proposed building. Dissenters, such as Tokyo Governor Ryokichi Minobe and Prime Minister Eisaku Sato, argued that the modernist building would disrupt the skyline and pollute the aesthetics of the Imperial Palace, its looming presence a sign of disrespect to the Imperial family situated in its shadow. Those in favor insisted that aesthetics should not be subject to government regulation, and that such attempts to mandate the visage of the city were antiquated.

After a year of discussion, the Construction Review Board and Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Company settled on a compromise: the building would be shrunk to a height of 99.7 meters and 25 stories. No significant changes to the appearance of the building were made, as Maekawa's design consisted of two rectangular volumes, flat on all sides, with modular windows across the entirety of the facade, making the process of removing floors a relatively simple revision. This rendered the debate around aesthetics somewhat moot, as the change in height essentially served as a symbolic gesture (creating a 100 meter limit that would later be surpassed by many buildings in Marunouchi, Chiyoda) and effected little noticeable change in the appearance of the building and its relation to the palace. Nevertheless, the building and the ensuing debate transformed the discourse surrounding urbanization, economic growth, and aesthetics in the Japanese capital, setting the stage for the dozens of skyscrapers that would be constructed in the decades to follow.

In 2021, the Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Company announced that Maekawa's building would be demolished and replaced with an even taller structure designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop and Mitsubishi Jisho Sekkei, slated to be completed in 2028. The building's fate falls in line with a trend befalling numerous other skyscrapers built in the same era, such as the World Trade Center in Tokyo.