Takamasa Yoshizaka  , family name also romanized as Yosizaka, was a Japanese architect and former president of the Architectural Institute of Japan and a keen mountaineer. After graduating from university, he worked at Le Corbusier's atelier in Paris for two years working on projects in France and India. After his return to Japan, he collaborated on Le Corbusier's National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo in 1959. He set up his own practice called Atelier U in 1964. He proposed a theory of "Discontinuous Unity" and translated many of Le Corbusier's works from French into Japanese. Takamasa Yosizaka was the first-born son of Toshizo and Hanako Yosizaka. He was born in Koishikawa in Tokyo. In 1921 he and his family left for Geneva where his father was an official for the Japanese government setting up the International Labour Organization. They returned to Japan in 1923 and moved to Hyakunin-cho in Shinjuku, Tokyo. After entering Waseda University Architecture Department in 1938 he graduated in 1943 before being drafted into the army. On returning from the war he went to live again in Shinjuku but built himself a house as the previous one had been burnt down in American bombing on 25 May 1945. In 1950 he accepted a French Government grant to work and study architecture in France where he enjoyed two years working at Le Corbusier's atelier in Paris. Yoshizaka arrived in Marseilles in late September, 1950. On 24 September 1950 he was shown around Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation which was under construction at that time. Two weeks later he was in Paris at Le Corbusier's office. Whilst in the office he worked on a number of projects including: site supervision at the Marseilles Unité d'Habitation, a Law School in Chandigarh and Nantes-Rezé Unité d'Habitation. In 1951 another group of Japanese students came to France to study. Amongst them was Ura Taro, a mathematician. He and Yosizaka became good friends and Ura asked Yosizaka to design his home upon his return to Japan. Yosizaka was a keen mountaineer. He joined the mountaineering club at high school in 1935 and in 1960 led an expedition to Mt. McKinley in Alaska. When he was living in Paris he appeared as an extra in the Julien Duvivier film "Sous le ciel de Paris" where he cycles through a scene by the Seine on a bicycle.