Yoshio Taniguchi, the Quiet Architect of the Okura and Ginza Six

Yoshio Taniguchi was born in Tokyo on 17 October 1937 and died on 16 December 2024. He is best known abroad for the expansion of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, selected in 1997 and completed in 2004, and in Japan for the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, which he designed in 1995. He received the Praemium Imperiale in 2005.

Rebuilding his father’s hotel

In 2019 he completed The Okura Tokyo, a reconstruction of the mid-century hotel designed by his father, Yoshiro Taniguchi. Our report on the opening is in The Okura Tokyo Opens, and the hotel is included in our guide to where to stay in Tokyo.

Ginza Six

He is also listed among the architects of Ginza Six, which opened on 20 April 2017 on the site of the former Matsuzakaya department store, with Gwenael Nicolas and Kenya Hara. The complex has 18 floors and space for up to 241 stores, a 4,000-square-metre roof garden and a 480-seat Noh theatre. See Ginza Six Opens.

Kanazawa

In Kanazawa he also designed the D. T. Suzuki Museum.