Talk

Fumihiko Maki

Bodies of Thought

Monday 24 September 2018 6.30 - 8pm

The Benjamin West Lecture Theatre, Burlington Gardens, Royal Academy of Arts

£20, £12 concessions

Priority booking for Friends opens at 12pm on Thursday 19 July 2018. Booking opens to the public at 12pm on Friday 20 July 2018.

Japanese architect and Pritzker Prize winner Fumihiko Maki takes a closer look at the work of his early mentors, Josep Lluís Sert and Kenzo Tange.

Writing and designing go hand in hand for the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki. Convinced of the need to articulate ideas through words as well as architectural form, Maki is a prolific writer. In his 2013 essay Modernism on the Open Sea, he explored universality in language and architecture, suggesting that the familiar rules of Modernism had been "thrown into an open sea" with little to guide architects about the future direction of practice.

Born in 1928, Fumihiko Maki was educated at the University of Tokyo and Harvard University. Since establishing Maki and Associates in 1965, he has completed many international projects including Hillside Terrace Apartments in Shibuya, Tokyo, the Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, the 4 World Trade Center skyscraper in New York, MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, the Sea World Culture and Arts Center in Shenzhen, the Bihar Museum in India, amongst many others. Maki’s first UK project, the Aga Khan Foundation, opened in King’s Cross earlier this year.

In this opening lecture of the ‘Bodies of Thought’ series, Maki will explore the concept of a ‘humanism of empathy’ in response to this context and discuss the work of his early mentors, Josep Lluís Sert Hon RA and Kenzo Tange.

Organised in collaboration with the Japan Foundation.

£20, £12 concessions

Priority booking for Friends opens at 12pm on Thursday 19 July 2018. Booking opens to the public at 12pm on Friday 20 July 2018.

‘Bodies of Thought’ lecture series

Great emphasis is placed on the role of research in architecture, however the definition can often be limiting, referring to technical or design knowledge acquired through practice. Since Antiquity though, architects have been expected to know and understand more than is required to design a structure.

In the first century BC Vitruvius wrote: ‘An architect should be also talented and docile in acquiring knowledge. Because neither talent without knowledge nor knowledge without talent can produce a perfect master’.

At the start of the Modern era, Sir John Soane began his first lecture as RA Professor of Architecture by restating the ‘law’ of the RA:

'The student must read much and reflect more. The mind of the student should be impressed with the absolute necessity of close and unremitted attention, of deep and indefatigable research.'

In this spirit, the ‘Bodies of Thought’ lecture series will invite architects to explain how their work has developed alongside a wider body of ideas that has shaped their thinking and practice.

This series is organised in partnership with The London School of Architecture and curated by Vicky Richardson.