Test your design IQ
Who is the Czech-born US architect who is recognized as the father of Modern Architecture in Japan with projects like the Reader’s Digest building in Tokyo and the Nagoya International School?
MANILA, Philippines - He was born in Bohemia or what is now the Czech Republic on May 10, 1888.
He immigrated to the US in 1910. There he began a three-year employment with Cass Gilbert, working on a number of projects including the Woolworth Building and the Austin, Nichols, and Company Warehouse in Brooklyn. The latter project gave him an insight into the structural and textural properties of concrete.
He worked for Frank Lloyd Wright in 1916 and assisted him in projects like the Imperial Hotel. He remained in Japan, however, and with his partner Ladislav Rado built numerous strcures, usually for Americans
It was during this time that he explored traditional Japanese techniques with the latest American building innovations. One of the few Modernist architects working in Japan at that time, he influenced such Japanese architects as Yoshimura Junzo and Maekawa Kunio.
Among these was the Reader’s Digest Building, the long rectilinear two-storey building with a cantilevered frame supported on a single row of concrete columns. The columns tilted outward from a vertical position. Floor to ceiling glazing on the second storey opened out on a balcony running the length of the building. It included technical innovations from America, like acoustic ceiling tiles, underfloor electricity ducts and fluorescent lighting.
One of his projects included the Chapel of Saint Joseph the Worker in Negros.
He won numerous awards including the Architectural Institute of Japan for the Reader’s Digest building in 1952 and the 1956 Medal of Honor by the New York Chapter of the American Institute of America.
He died in Pennsylvania on Oct. 25, 1976.
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Answer: Roger Verge
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