Architecture & design
Fumihiko Maki
1928–2024 · architect
Japanese Pritzker Prize–winning architect who earned his first master's degree at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills.
- Born
Tokyo, Japan- Died
Tokyo, Japan
aged 95- Detroit years
- 1952–1953
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
After graduating in architecture from the University of Tokyo in 1952, Maki crossed the Pacific to continue his studies at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, the modernist school built by Eliel Saarinen. He completed a master's degree there in 1953 before moving on to Harvard's Graduate School of Design. The Cranbrook year exposed him to the Saarinen tradition of designing buildings, landscape and interiors as one whole, an idea that stayed with him. He went on to co-found the Japanese Metabolist movement, to teach at Washington University in St. Louis and Harvard, and to build works such as the Spiral in Tokyo and Four World Trade Center in New York. In 1993 he received the Pritzker Prize, architecture's highest honor. He died in Tokyo in 2024 at the age of 95.
Highlights
- Master of Architecture, Cranbrook Academy of Art, 1953
- Pritzker Architecture Prize, 1993
- Co-founder of the Metabolist movement in Japan
- Designed Four World Trade Center in New York (2013)
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · 1952–1953
Cranbrook Academy of Art
Where he earned his master's degree in architecture in 1953.