MAKI OPUS

A comprehensive career retrospective on Fumihiko Maki, the master of Japanese modernist architecture, richly illustrated and complete with detailed plans.

MAKI OPUS is the definitive book on the life and work of Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki (1928–2024), known for designing understated yet boundary-pushing buildings in Japan and worldwide. At 400 pages and with 1,000 illustrations, it is the biggest survey of Maki’s work to date, and was compiled in close collaboration with his studio both before and after his death. MAKI OPUS brings together the architect’s own selection of the buildings that best exemplified his career, and saw him pave the way for the next wave of superlative Japanese architects.

Featuring fifty buildings from 1960 right up to the present day – including MIT Media Lab, the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto and 4 World Trade Centre – the book reconsiders Maki’s work in light of his use of materials, changes in building technology and his relationship with the world outside Japan. His team has dug into the practice’s archives to find photographs and drawings that have never been seen in print before, allowing the reader a fresh look at his best-known projects.

Maki was truly an architect’s architect, respected throughout the industry for his technical innovation and his deep understanding of how buildings are experienced and used. Architecture students will find inspiration in his early years starting out under the tutelage of Kenzo Tange, while a general architecture-interested audience will enjoy vibrant full-colour photography of his lauded, understated and much copied style, described by many as the ‘architecture of simplicity’.