Noriaki Okabe

Who is Noriaki Okabe?

Noriaki Okabe is a Japanese architect.

He was born in Shizuoka, Japan. He worked with Renzo Piano for twenty years in Europe, from the designing construction supervision of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

In 1988, Okabe, then the representative of Renzo Piano Building Workshop in Japan, won the international competition of Kansai International Airport Terminal Building and was responsible for the design and construction supervision. While not currently on display, the Museum of Modern Art holds a model of the building's main structural truss in its Architecture and Design department.

After the construction of the Terminal Building, he established Noriaki Okabe Architecture Network in 1995 in Tokyo. While Okabe's practice has since expanded beyond architecture into industrial design, including the Odakyu 50000 series VSE train. In 2009 he collaborated with Belgian architect Jean-Michel Jaspers in designing the Belgian Embassy in Tokyo.