Word: taniguchi
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...Museum Of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City announced that Yoshio Taniguchi had won a 10-entrant competition against world-famous architects like Bernard Tschumi and Rem Koolhaas to design the museum's $425 million overhaul. Around the world, art lovers and architecture mavens alike responded with a loud, bemused, "Who?" So unknown was the 67-year-old architect outside his native Japan that one confused well-wisher congratulated Terence Riley, MOMA's chief curator of architecture and design, on selecting "Tony Gucci," a nonexistent Italian architect...
...shed no tears for Taniguchi the Obscure. He prefers anonymity. Indeed, he kicked off a recent interview with TIME in his almost monastically spare office in central Tokyo by confessing half-nervously, half-wearily: "I've been avoiding this type of thing as much as possible." Still, MOMA reopened last Saturday amid great fanfare, so there's now no avoiding the limelight. Although he has a built a number of highly respected buildings in Japan (including eight museums) over a 40-year career, this is Taniguchi's first international commission?and it ranks as one of the most important museum...
...Taniguchi's reticence is not a pose, but a reflection of an old-fashioned conviction that his work should speak for itself. "I don't like the thought that some people might know me but not what I design," he says. "I choose to express myself through my architecture." His indifference to the jostling for position that often defines the architecture game is so pronounced that Taniguchi initially ruled himself out of the high-profile contest to refashion MOMA. He had never participated in a competition, and he was in no hurry to start. "I prefer to design for clients...
...Riley had stumbled across one of Taniguchi's museums in Japan in the early '90s and had been dazzled. "One can't help but be amazed at the thoughtfulness and thoroughness of his work," says Riley. "In a country where they have incredible earthquake requirements, there was something ineffably light about his buildings. It's this attempt to take all of these millions of tons of material and put them together in a way that they seem neither heavy nor even material." So, in 1996, when MOMA sent out 10 letters of invitation to participate in the competition, Taniguchi...
...remains to be seen whether nouvelle manga will amount to a real movement. It would help if two or more masterworks appeared under such a label. Neither Jiro Taniguchi's "The Walking Man" nor Kazuichi Hanawa's "Doing Time" have quiet enough depth to justify calling them "masterworks." Even so, these Franco-Japanese creations are some of the most unusual, fascinating comix published this year...