Reiko Hayama, Between the Acts: Legacies from Le Corbusier and Kunio Maekawa

Abstract

Filiation, or the sharing of a creative legacy from one generation to another, is more obvious when considering principles specific to architecture. This paper examines how Le Corbusier’s legacy was passed down to Reiko Hayama, a pioneering Japanese woman architect who started her career working in Tokyo from 1959 until 1965 for Kunio Maekawa, one of “the Master’s” previous collaborators at Rue de Sèvres 35. She then moved to Paris to work for Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouvé before establishing her own atelier from 1976 until 2013. This article focuses on the active resonances of Le Corbusier’s heritage in Hayama’s personal practice. Her reflections indicate that Maekawa and Prouvé opened a path to her that was situated apart from Le Corbusier’s principles. This path included: an environmental concern ethic, a design process that took cultural context deliberately into account and an architectural form derived from a technological reasoning process. In direct heritage, she assumed the Modulor’s legacy itself, an important operative tool in Corbusian methodology.