(b Kushiro, Hokkaido, 14 Nov 1941). Japanese architect and teacher. He studied architecture with Masaya Mukai at Kobe University, graduating in 1965; he then taught at the university from 1965 to 1976. He set up his own practice, Monta Mozuna Mobile Molgue, in Kobe in 1969, opening the Monta Mozuna (later Kiko Mozuna) Atelier in Tokyo in 1977. His first work, his own Anti-dwelling Box House (1972), Kushiro, established him as one of Japan’s leading Post-modernists. His other notable buildings include the Yin-yang House (1983), Kushiro, the Akan Wagoto Museum (1983), Teshikago, the Kushiro Marshland Observatory (1984), the Kushiro City Museum (1984), Kushiro Fisherman’s Wharf (1987) and the Kushiro Higashi Middle School (1989). Mozuna often interpreted his work in terms of Esoteric Buddhist philosophy or natural symbolism. He compared the form of the Kushiro City Museum, for example, to that of a bird with its wings wrapped around its eggs and described its three display levels as representing earth, man and the heavens and its double-spiral staircases as referring to the double helix of DNA.

• Mozuna, Kiko
  • Indian subcontinent, §III, 8(iii): 19th century–1947: Indian architecture and the West