Born in 1931 on the southern island of Kyushu, Arata Isozaki witnessed the bombing and destruction of his hometown and the nearby cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the age of 14 - he would carry these images of destruction and urban absence throughout his long career. Isozaki studied architecture at the University of Tokyo before apprenticing under Kenzo Tange and then establishing his own firm in 1963. Whilst not involved in the earliest days of Metabolism, Isozaki’s 1962 City in the Air scheme, which imagined tree-like clusters of apartments, offices and transport nodes linked in a futuristic aerial network, became a key example of the movement and its architectural style. Amongst his first built works, the Ōita Medical Hall (1960) and Ōita Prefectural Library (1966), demonstrated a fusion of both Brutalism and Metabolism. For Expo 70 in Osaka, Isozaki was invited by Kenzo Tange to develop designs for The Festival Plaza mechanical, electrical, and electronic installations - Isozaki designed the building-sized rolling cybernetic machines known as the Osaka Demonstration Robots.

Beginning in the 1980s, Isozaki’s work became more idiosyncratic - particularly as he began to gain commissions outside Japan. Key works include the Museum of Modern Art in Gunma (1974) and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (1986). Isozaki also designed the distinctive Arch building at Bond University on the Gold Coast (1989) - his only work in Australia. In 2019 Arata Isozaki was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize, having been a long-time adviser to the prize and jury member from 1979-1984.

Robin Boyd profiled Isozaki in New Directions in Japanese Architecture. A letter from Paul Hopkins, Boyd’s Australian contact in Tokyo for New Directions, highlighted Isozaki as a particularly exciting architect. Hopkins made reference to a recent bank branch building that was likely the Fukuoka Mutual Bank Branch in Isozaka’s hometown of Oita.