was a Japanese architect and professor.

Biography

Imai was born on 11 January 1895, in

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

. He went to

Waseda University Waseda University (Japanese: ), abbreviated as or , is a private university, private research university in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Founded in 1882 as the Tōkyō Professional School by Ōkuma Shigenobu, the fifth Prime Minister of Japan, prime ministe ...

in Tokyo and graduated with a degree in architecture. He travelled to the

USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

Scandinavia Scandinavia is a subregion#Europe, subregion of northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. It can sometimes also ...

, Italy and Spain in 1926. He met

Walter Gropius Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (; 18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-born American architect and founder of the Bauhaus, Bauhaus School, who is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture. He was a founder of ...

Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , ; ), was a Swiss-French architectural designer, painter, urban planner and writer, who was one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture ...

Ernst May Ernst Georg May (27 July 1886 – 11 September 1970) was a German architect and city planner. May successfully applied urban design techniques to the city of Frankfurt am Main during the Weimar Republic period, and in 1930 less successful ...

and others, which asserted an influence on his way of thinking and his architectural style. Like

Togo Murano was a Japanese people, Japanese architect. Although his formative years were between 1910 and 1930, he remained active in design throughout his life and at the time of his death was responsible for over three hundred completed projects. Althoug ...

and Takamasa Yoshizaka who also trained at Waseda University, Imai had a style which can be categorized as

Expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

. Impressed with the works of Antoni Gaudi, he proceeded to promote him in Japan and elsewhere. He also introduced the work of the Austrian mystic,

Rudolf Steiner Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (; 27 or 25 February 1861 – 30 March 1925) was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century ...

to Japan. In 1948 his wife Maria Shimko died and he converted to

Catholicism The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

.http://www.gaudidesigner.com/uk/sagrada-familia-japanese-were-the-first-in-the-world-to-show-interest-in-gaudis-works_350.html Gaudi Designer. Retrieved 2009-04-20. Imai died on 20 May 1987, in Tokyo.

Works

Waseda Theatre Museum Tokyo Japan 2006-03-22

* Library at Waseda University (1925) * Twenty-Six Martyrs Museum and Monument (1962) *Tokado Imperial Palace (1966) *Okuma Shigenobu Memorial Museum, Saga City (1967). In honor of Japan's Prime Minister Ōkuma Shigenobu (1838-1922).

References

1895 births 1987 deaths Waseda University alumni Japanese architects {{Japan-architect-stub