Hiroyuki Suzuki (architectural historian), Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
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Japanese architectural historian
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Tokyo, Japan
About Hiroyuki Suzuki (architectural historian)
- Hiroyuki Suzuki (????) (May 14, 1945 – February 3, 2014) was a prominent Japanese architectural historian who also established a reputation abroad. For most of his career Suzuki was Professor of the History of Architecture at the University of Tokyo (1974-2009), and for a period was also Chairman of Tokyo University's Graduate School of Architecture.
- Later in life he joined the faculty of the School of Cultural and Creative Studies at Aoyama University.
- He was the author of over a dozen books and countless articles in Japanese, but was best known to English readers as the co-author (with Reyner Banham and Kobayashi Katsuhiro) of Contemporary Architecture of Japan, 1958-1984 (New York: Rizzoli,1985) and Shuhei Endo: Paramodern Architecture (Phaidon Press, 2006), among others. His Japanese-language scholarship ranged from research on such prominent Meiji-period figures as Josiah Conder and Ito Chuta (????), to many works on contemporary Tokyo, a city to which he was strongly attached.
- He was among the first architectural historians inside or outside Japan to focus on Meiji and Taisho-period architects and architecture, and argue for continuities between this and the later post-war period when Japanese 'modern' architecture became globally influential.Suzuki was a strong proponent of preserving "modern", and not just "traditional" Japanese architecture, and did not shy from wading into development controversies.
- As chairman of the Japanese branch of the Paris-based conservation group Docomomo International, he oversaw drafting of a list of 135 "modern" Japanese structures worthy of protection.
- He was a prominent member of the Architectural Consortium that in 2012 received the World Monuments Fund / Knoll Modernism Prize for saving and restoring the Hizuchi Elementary School in Shikoku, designed by Masatsune Matsumura in the late 1950s.[4] He also consulted on the restoration of Tokyo Station.For twelve years (1996-2008) Suzuki was one of three members of the Ad Hoc Group of Experts at the Coordinating Committee of Angkor (ICC), advising the Cambodian government on the preservation of Angkor Wat[5] Among many honors, Suzuki is a recipient of Japan's Medal of Honor (?? hosho) with Purple Ribbon for his service to scholarship.
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