6b.

Kenzo Tange:
Both JAPANESE and
INTERNATIONAL
(1913 2005) was a Japanese
architect, and and winner of the
1987 Pritzker Price for
architecture.
He was one of the most
significant architects of the 20th
century, combining traditional
Japanese styles with modernism,
and designed major buildings on
five continents.
Tradition can, to be sure, participate in a creation, but it can no

longer be creative itself."

Influenced from an early age by the Swiss modernist, Le Corbusier, Tange

gained international recognition in 1949 when he won the competition for the
design of Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

Joining the group of

architects known as Team
X in the late 1950s he
steered the group towards
the movement that became
METABOLISM.

METABOLISM
Tokyo Bay, By Kenzo Tange

In 1960 Tange published his

monumental "Plan for Tokyo, " a
stimulating - and widely
publicized - theoretical exercise
which foresaw a need to
restructure the 20th-century city.
Based in part upon an analogy
with nature - "the various
architectural works will form the
leaves, and the transportation
and communications facilities
the trunk of a great tree, " Tange
wrote - the plan envisioned a
vast radial overlay of buildings
and roadways above and
beyond traditional Tokyo.
Although somewhat terrifying
in scale, the buildings, structures
of concrete, shown in
photographs and models were
physically impressive, even
beautiful.

METABOLISM
Tokyo Bay, By Kenzo Tange

Tange argued that the normal urban

pattern of a radial centripetal
transportation system was a relic of
the Middle Ages and would not handle
the strain placed upon it by the world's
mega cities, which he qualified as
those with populations greater than
10 million.
Rather than building up a city from a
civic centre, Tange's proposal was
based on civic axis, developing the
city in a linear fashion.
Three levels of traffic, graded
according to speed, would facilitate the
movement of up to 2.5 million people
along the axis, which would be divided
into vertebrae-like cyclical
transportation elements.
The sheer size of the proposal
meant that it would stretch out across
the water of Tokyo Bay.

Plan for Tokyo Bay.

BLUE REVOLUTION: Plan for Tokyo Bayl. Kenzo Tange. 1960. Model.

METABOLIST FLOATING CITIES

http://factsanddetails.com/japan.php?itemid=686&catid=20&subcatid=129

Throughout the 1960s, the Japanese avant-garde architectural

movement known as "Metabolism" profoundly influenced the ideas of urban
space and architecture in Japan. Metabolist proposals for floating cities
drew global attention that coincided with the accelerated development of the
sea. Christal Whelan wrote in Daily Yomiuri: Central to the

Metabolists' project was the ocean as the site of a new

civilization. They rebelled against Modernism on the grounds
that it lacked life, for architecture was to be a dynamic process
receptive to change. Respect for ecology, symbiosis of styles,
and sustainability were all part of their credo. Osaka-born
Tange envisioned a series of ocean cities along the entire
Pacific coast that would launch a new era of "Marine
Civilization."

This new emphasis on the sea, a kind of "blue revolution" would

finally free humankind from 5,000 years of tyranny by continent-based
civilization. The vast oceans that covered three-quarters of the planet,
viewed as a new frontier, would make it possible to transfer the congested
population offshore.

A determinedly indeterminate building...

For many, Tange was the godfather, or shogun, of 1960s brutalism.

In fact, his most successful brutalist design, the Yamanashi Press and
Broadcasting Centre, was as much a samurai fortress brought into the late
20th century as it was a modern concrete megastructure.
Intriguingly, although it seems all of a piece, this was a determinedly
indeterminate building in the sense that, theoretically at least, its 16
massive cylindrical towers, housing the centre's services, could be greatly
extended, while yawning gaps left between occupied floors could be filled in
with future offices and studios as required.
oday, these gaps have been filled in with terraces and roof gardens,
adding to the enigmatic and unexpectedly romantic quality of this powerful
design.

The building comprises an

array of horizontal units
plugged into, and
supported by, 16 huge
concrete columns whose
hollow cores contain the
needed support services
(stairwells, elevators, airconditioning plant, and
rest rooms). A feature of
the building, as of the
Tokyo plan, is its ability to
be added to without
change to the fundamental
structural system (this in
fact was done in 1975).

Yamanashi Press and

Broadcasting Building (1966)
in Kofu

Yamanashi Press
and Broadcasting
Building

Although the Osaka

Expo (1970) `had
marked a decline in the
Metabolist movement,
it resulted in a "handing
over" of the reigns to a
younger generation of
architects such as
Kazuo Shinohara and
Arata Isozaki.

National Gymnasiums:
The roofs of these two circular buildings
indelibly recall the massive forms of
traditional Japanese temples, but they
are, also, altogether contemporary in form
and technique.

National Gymnasiums.

National Gymnasiums for Olympics.. Tokyo. Kenzo Tange 1964

Tange's best-known buildings are the two national gymnasiums erected in

Tokyo for the 1964 Olympic Games (the first to be held in Asia). The roofs of these
two circular buildings indelibly recall the massive forms of traditional Japanese
temples, but they are, also, altogether contemporary in form and technique. These
roofs, suspended by cable from massive concrete pillars (a single pillar for the smaller
structure, a pair for the larger), consist of prestressed steel nets onto which are
attached welded steel plates.
The drama of these forms continues in the interiorsbold, elegant, welcoming
open spaces illuminated by a combination of artificial with natural light.

Yoyogi Gymnasium

Yoyogi Gymnasium

Yoyogi Gymnasium

Tange visited several medieval cathedrals before producing the design of

St. Mary Cathedral. "After experiencing their heaven-aspiring grandeur and
ineffably mystical spaces," he said later, "I began to imagine new spaces,
and wanted to create them by means of modern technology." Which he did,
and yet the soaring concrete cathedral is recognisably medieval in
inspiration.

Cathedral

Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building: The external skin of the building makes
dual references to both modernism and tradition.
The outlines reminiscent of both timber boarding and the lines on semiconductor boards.

Tokyo, City Hall

Palazzo BMW,
Milano

ON KENZO TANGE (Guardian)

Tadao Ando, one of Japan's greatest living architects, likes to tell the
story of the stray dog, a stately akita, that wandered into his studio in
Osaka some 20 years ago, and decided to stay. "First, I thought I would
call her Kenzo Tange; but then I realised I couldn't kick Kenzo Tange
around. So I called her Le Corbusier instead."
Kenzo Tange, the most influential figure in post-war Japanese
architecture, who has died aged 91, was profoundly influenced by the
work of Le Corbusier. In turn, Tange's hugely impressive body of work
was to influence, indeed dominate, that of a younger generation of
brilliant young Japanese architects up to, and including, Ando.

If Tange began by imitating the late-flowering,

sculptural concrete designs of the Swiss-French genius,
he went on to create a body of internationally recognised
work that was very much his own, fusing traditional
Japanese forms with the very latest in structural
daring.

His finest buildings include the twin arena of the two

national gymnasiums for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the
Yamanashi press and broadcasting centre at Kofu (1964-67)
and, beginning at his beginning, the peace park and peace
centre at Hiroshima (1949-55).

Many of Tange's later buildings, including the new Tokyo city hall
complex (1991), the United Overseas Bank Plaza, Singapore (1995) and
the Tokyo Dome hotel (2000), were realised on daunting scales. Yet, as the
prolific architect said: "We live in a world where great incompatibles coexist: the human scale and the superhuman scale, stability and mobility,
permanence and change, identity and anonymity, comprehensibility and
universality. I like to think there is something deep in our own world of reality
that will create a dynamic balance between technology and human
existence, the relationship between which has a decisive effect on
contemporary cultural forms and social structure."
Ironically, as a young man, Tange did not expect to become an architect.
He was born in Osaka, and brought up, in modest circumstances, in the
small city of Imabari, on Shikoku Island. Nevertheless, he won his way to
the University of Tokyo's architecture department, and began working, in
1938, for Kunio Maekawa, who had practised with Le Corbusier in his Paris
studio in the late 1920s.
During the second world war, Tange furthered his studies as a graduate
student in Tokyo, becoming an assistant professor at Tokyo University in
1946. He set up his own studio, through which such distinguished architects
as Fumihiko Maki, Kisho Kurokawa and Arata Isozaki passed, learned,
contributed and flourished.

His first major commission was hugely symbolic: the replanning of the city of
Hiroshima after its destruction by Little Boy, the atomic bomb dropped by the USAF
B-29 Enola Gay on August 6 1945. At the heart of the revived city, Tange built a
peace centre, raised on stilt-like, Le Corbusier-style columns, or piloti, faced by a
monument that married ancient forms and the latest structural technology.
This peacetime fusion of a traditional Haniwa tomb and a concrete hyperbolic
parabola was very much a symbol of the new Japan, resolutely looking to the future
while proudly recalling the best of its pre-imperial past.

METABOLIST PERIOD

As Le Corbusier long dreamed of rebuilding the

centre of Paris, so Tange worked long and hard on
a comprehensive, and highly contentious,
redesign of his country's capital city. His plan
for Tokyo (1960) received worldwide attention. In
practice, it would have meant projecting the city
out over the bay, using man-made islands
connected by a proliferation of bridges, and
characterised not by buildings as such, but by eyeboggling concrete megastructures.
These great concrete concatenations,
although never realised on the scale Tange had
intended in Tokyo, were hugely influential in
Britain, encouraging a generation of architects who
were in love with raw concrete and sheer scale,
and were labelled "brutalists" by the critic Reyner
Banham. For many, Tange was the godfather, or
shogun, of 1960s brutalism.

In fact, his most successful

brutalist design, the Yamanashi
press and broadcasting centre,
was as much a samurai fortress
brought into the late 20th century
as it was a modern concrete
megastructure. Intriguingly,
although it seems all of a piece,
this was a determinedly
indeterminate building in the sense
that, theoretically at least, its 16
massive cylindrical towers, housing
the centre's services, could be
greatly extended, while yawning
gaps left between occupied floors
could be filled in with future offices
and studios as required. Today,
these gaps have been filled in with
terraces and roof gardens, adding
to the enigmatic and unexpectedly
romantic quality of this powerful
design.

"The role of tradition," said

Tange, "is that of a catalyst which
furthers a chemical reaction, but is
no longer detectable in the end
result. Tradition can, to be sure,
participate in a creation, but it can
no longer be creative itself."
The cathedral of St Mary, Tokyo
(1964), another powerful meeting of
historic and contemporary form and
structure, both confirms and denies
this article of architectural faith.
Tange visited several medieval
cathedrals before producing his
design. "After experiencing their
heaven-aspiring grandeur and
ineffably mystical spaces," he said
later, "I began to imagine new
spaces, and wanted to create them
by means of modern technology."
Which he did, and yet the soaring
concrete cathedral is recognisably
medieval in inspiration.

LATE-MODERNIST PERIOD

Outside Japan, Tange was more overtly modern, as in the examples of

his extension of McKim Meade and White's Minneapolis art museum (1975),
his only work in the United States, and in the office and hotel towers he
designed for the Taiwanese capital, Taipei, and Singapore.
An often profound thinker and learned teacher, in Japan, Canada and
the US, Tange continued until he died, although he retired from practice
three years ago, to imagine how architecture could be convincingly
reconciled with the very latest communications and building technologies.
He had disliked the wilful excesses of postmodern design in the 1980s, and
watched cautiously as a new wave of gratuitous bendy, twisty buildings
sprouted from city skylines worldwide in the 1990s.
He was, though, quietly optimistic, considering these fashionable
affectations to be no more than "transitional architectural expressions", an
accusation it would difficult to level at the Yamanashi press and
broadcasting centre or the national gymnasium, Tokyo.
Tange leaves his second wife, Takako Iwata, whom he married in 1973,
their son, who is also an architect, and a daughter.