ABSTRACT

For a number of subliminal reasons that have yet to be fully explored, the French-Swiss architect Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris, or Le Corbusier, has had an inordinate influence on successive generations of Japanese architects. While in Le Corbusier's Paris Atelier, Maekawa worked on the Cité Mondiale, or Mundaneum, which was intended to be attached to and to augment the peaceful mission of the League of Nations in Geneva. Three years before the conflict ended, Maekawa found respite by designing his own house, which has since been relocated to the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum in Tokyo Musashi-Koganei. Junzo Sakakura and Takamasa Yoshizaka followed Maekawa to Le Corbusier's Paris office, but both the timing and duration of their respective apprenticeships had an important impact on their subsequent career paths. In 1959 Maekawa, along with Sakakura and Takamasa, helped Le Corbusier realize what was to become his only building in Japan, and Maekawa's Festival Hall.