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Noriaki Okabe

Japanese architect

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 3, 2026
Entity authorityQ7051215 ↗
Source-derived summary

Noriaki Okabe (岡部 憲明, Okabe Noriaki; born December 9, 1947) is a Japanese architect.

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

In 1988, Okabe, then the representative of the Renzo Piano Building Workshop in Japan, won the international competition for the 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 the 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.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Noriaki Okabe” is japanese architect. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Noriaki, Okabe and Japanese, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1947, 1988, 1995, 2009—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1947-12-09. For this dossier, Noriaki, Okabe and Japanese is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “japanese architect” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7051215. VIAF identifies the subject as 115362738. The Library of Congress control number is no2006047647. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947, 1988, 1995 and 2009.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Noriaki Okabe”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Noriaki Okabe primary sources, Noriaki Okabe archive and Noriaki research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Noriaki Okabe”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Noriaki Okabe” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.