(b Pusan, South Korea, 8 April 1920; d Tokyo, 9 Feb 1979). Japanese architect, teacher and writer. He graduated in architecture from the University of Tokyo (1944) and from 1944 to 1946 he worked in the office of Junzo Sakakura. He was then appointed as a lecturer in architecture at the University of Tokyo, became a professor and continued to teach there until his death. One of Ikebe’s principal interests was industrialization and modular coordination in building, particularly in housing. Influenced by Le Corbusier’s ‘Le Modulor’, he developed a new modular system, ‘GM module’, based on the number two. Another prime interest was housing design; he designed about 100 private houses but no large-scale housing complexes because he believed the Japanese building industry was not yet sufficiently well organized to produce good-quality work at that scale. Examples of his residential designs include a series of experimental minimalist houses (1950) in which he explored the standardization of form and space. He also designed the Kagoshima Space Centre (1962–79) for the University of Tokyo, Kagoshima Prefecture. This was Japan’s first institute for space science, and Ikebe collaborated with many scientists and engineers, applying systems theory to the industrialized design of the building.