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Previous Conferences // 1998: Megaform as Urban Landscape // Speakers

21 - 23 June 1998

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Rafael Vinoly

Rafael Vinoly graduated in architecture from the University of Buenos Aires in 1969 at the age of twenty five. Three years earlier, in conjunction with six other architects, he founded the Estudio de Arquitectura, and in less than a decade this practice became one of the largest in South America. It was during this precocious period that Vinoly produced some of his most brilliant designs, including a series of concrete framed bank buildings faced entirely in glass blocks and an equally seminal housing complex, comprising six twenty-storey towers linked by aerial bridges. His last work at an urban scale before leaving the partnership to establish his own firm in New York in 1978 was a colour television centre that took the form of four free-standing windowless studios mounted on top of a podium containing ancillary accommodation. The podium roof was landscaped so as to serve as a park. In 1989 he won the Tokyo International Forum which was once again a dense urban complex consisting of a convention centre, four auditoriums ranging from six hundred to five thousand seats, two cinemas, restaurants, shops and a large, lenticular-shaped winter garden. This is by far his most significant work to date, not only for its sheer size and complexity, but also because it establishes itself as a "city-in-miniature" within the already dense fabric of downtown Tokyo.

Rafael Vinoly

Tokyo International Forum, Tokyo, Japan