Celebrating Fumihiko Maki (1928–2024): Investigations in Collective Form and its Global Legacy

The legacy of Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki (1928–2024) today spans the globe, his accomplishments and contributions to architecture and urban planning extending far beyond his involvement in the Metabolist Movement in 1960. Maki launched his exemplary career a just few years earlier as a young associate professor of architecture at Washington University in St. Louis, where he began teaching in 1956 and where he completed his first built work, Steinberg Hall in 1960. Four years later, Maki published his seminal work Investigations in Collective Form articulating his theory of group form as a method of urban design, which he first outlined in the Metabolism 1960 pamphlet distributed at the World Design Conference in Tokyo. This panel celebrates the legacy of Maki’s theories of urban design across the globe, examining not only his major works from Hillside Terrace (1969–92) in Tokyo to the Kemper Art Museum (2006) on WashU’s own campus, but the ways in which Maki has shaped generations the practices of architects and planners in the past, present, and future.