Raise even more money, and Ill make the architecture disappearthese were Yoshio Taniguchis famous words addressed to MoMAs Board of Trustees, according to Hal Foster. Taniguchi expanded MoMA between 1997 and 2004, a whopping $850 million project. His only other U.S. work was Houstons Asia Society Texas Center, completed in 2011. Taniguchi died on December 16 after battling pneumonia. News of Taniguchis passing was confirmed by his company, Taniguchi & Associates. The modernist from Japan was 87.The late architect often described architecture as a process of synthesizing many needs and structural considerations into one unifying theme.MoMA Courtyard (Alsandro/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 2.5)Taniguchi was born in 1937. His father, Yoshiro Taniguchi, was also an architect, a famous one at that. Taniguchi the younger studied mechanical engineering in Tokyo and then architecture at Harvard GSD. After leaving Harvard, Taniguchi worked for Walter Gropius and later Kenzo Tange. In 1975, he opened his office in Tokyo. One of his first major commissions, Shiseido Museum of Art, opened in 1978.Others followed, including the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Ken Domon Museum of Photography Tokyo Sea Life Park, Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, and others. He partnered with Isamu Noguchi, Peter Walker, and other luminaries on high-profile projects.Toyota Municipal Museum of Art (Nopira/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)MoMA director Glenn Lowry said Taniguchi beat out nine other architects for the expansion which made the Japanese modernist famous in the U.S. Those names included Toyo Ito, Steven Holl, Rem Koolhaas, Herzog & de Meuron, and others.At first, Taniguchi rejected the offer from Riley and Lowry to participate in the competition. It was a friend who convinced Taniguchi over dinner one evening in Tokyo to enter. I was surprised to get the invitation from Terry Riley and Glenn, Taniguchi told Charlie Rose in 2001. I had never been in a competition before.Museum of Architecture Kanazawa (Araisyohei/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 4.0)In 2004, a retrospective opened at MoMA curated by the late Terrence Riley, Yoshio Taniguchi: Nine Museums. As the name suggests, the show featured nine museum projects designed by Taniguchi. Overtime, Taniguchi got teaching appointments at University of Cape Town and UCLA. His second project in the U.S. finished in 2011.These days, we have many different ways of presenting ourselves, using computer graphics, models, and perspective drawings, Taniguchi said. But my type of architecture is very difficult to present through this media, because my architecture isnt based on structure or form. Rather, I try to create an environment for people to meet works of art. Its very subtle.