Taiji Miyasaka

ProfessorArchitecture
tmiyasaka@wsu.edu
509-335-8091
Carpenter Hall 114
PO Box 642220

Taiji Miyasaka began teaching at Washington State University in 2002 after ten years of professional experience at architecture firms in New York and the Netherlands. In the School of Design and Construction, he served as Architecture Program Head from 2012-2015 and as Foundation Studio Coordinator for eight years prior. He has taught undergraduate and graduate design studios at every year level, as well as created a graduate tectonics seminar and a study abroad course on Japanese architecture. Miyasaka’s teaching is informed by research in the areas of materiality, design process/communication, and design pedagogy. The results of his teaching and research are documented in his book, “Seeing and Making in Architecture: Design Exercises,” which investigates the practices of rigorous observation and material experimentation for manifesting ingenuity in the design process.

In his creative work, Miyasaka seeks to design and build architectural interventions that explore the role of materiality and context in discovering design potentials. His project “Light Hole Shed,” built using reclaimed timber from grain elevators in eastern Washington, won a Citation Award for Making in the AIA Seattle 2012 Honor Awards. “Night Blooming,” a structure that alludes to the qualities of light and darkness in grain elevators, was installed for the BAM Biennial 2014: Knock on Wood at Bellevue Arts Museum.

Education

Master of Science in Advanced Architecture Design, Columbia University.

Master of Architecture, University of Michigan.

Bachelor of Engineering in Architecture, Kyoto University (Japan).