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By now it's an old story: In 1997, when Yoshio Taniguchi (1), then 60, was named the architect of the Museum of Modern Art, much of the architecture world's cognoscenti said "who?" He had been selected first from a list of 10 architects, including Steven Holl, Bernard Tschumi, Rafael Vinoly, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, Herzog & de Meuron, Toyo Ito, Wiel Arets, Rem Koolhaas, and Dominique Perrault. Then the shortlist had come down to Tschumi, Herzog & de Meuron, and Taniguchi.
Taniguchi, who has a strong reputation in Japan for museums and civic buildings, had not designed anything outside the country. But he was the product of Harvard's Graduate School of Design in the early 1960s, during the Jose Luis Sert years when Le Corbusier's spirit was pervasive. Fumihiko Maki, not much older, was teaching there and became his mentor and friend. Although Taniguchi had begun his career studying mechanical engineering at Keio University in Tokyo, his father, Yoshiro Taniguchi, a well-known Modernist architect who designed the Okura Hotel in Tokyo, had secretly hoped his son would turn to architecture. With the subtle encouragement of a family friend, it worked. When Taniguchi returned to Japan in 1964, he worked for Kenzo Tange, often on large urban projects, for 10 years before establishing his own office.
Taniguchi's style, as can be seen by the exhibition (and lavishly photographed book), Yoshio Taniguchi: Nine Museums, organized by Terence Riley, MoMA's...