Terunobu Fujimori (born 1946) is a Japanese architect and architectural historian, known for odd, humorous buildings made with natural materials and old techniques used in new ways. Born in what is now Chino in Nagano Prefecture, he studied at Tōhoku University and the University of Tokyo, where he later became a professor. In the 1970s he led the "Architecture Detectives", who searched Tokyo for early Western-style buildings. He did not begin to build until his forties, with a historical museum in his home town in 1991, and he became widely known in the West after representing Japan at the 2006 Venice Biennale.
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The Nira House (Leek House) in Machida (1997), planted with leeks, won the Japan Grand Art Prix, and the Akino Fuku Art Museum in Hamamatsu (1998) followed. Takasugi-an (2004), whose name means "too high tea house", sits six metres up on two chestnut trees and is entered by ladder. Lamune Onsen in Taketa (2005) is a hot-spring bath faced in bands of charred cedar and white mortar, its steam towers roofed in hand-rolled copper and each topped with a live pine.
