Essays reframing Kenzo Tange as the first non-Western architect whose work was read as universal, with close case studies on Hiroshima, the Tokyo Bay Plan and the Yoyogi stadiums.
About this book
Few architects shaped the postwar century as decisively as Kenzo Tange, and fewer still crossed so completely from national figure to global one. This collection gathers an international team of scholars around a single question: how did an architect working through the wreckage of the war become the first non-Western designer whose work was read as universal? The essays set Tange against the contingencies of Japanese modernism while placing him inside broader arguments about cultural identity, technology, urbanisation and the synthesis of the arts. Case studies on Hiroshima, the Tokyo Bay Plan and the Yoyogi stadiums do the close work, tracing how his methodology moved between the drawing board and the scale of the city. Co-published with the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and designed by Integral Lars Müller, it remains the most substantial English-language reassessment of Tange in decades.
Key features
- 186 illustrations drawn from archival drawings and period photographs
- Edited by Seng Kuan and Yukio Lippit, with essays from an international group of scholars
- Case studies on the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, the Tokyo Bay Plan and the Yoyogi stadiums
- Co-published with the Harvard University Graduate School of Design; designed by Integral Lars Müller
What you'll discover
- How Tange's role in the Metabolist movement positioned him between national reconstruction and the international avant-garde
- Why Hiroshima became the testing ground for a public architecture of memory, and what that project set in motion
- The reasoning behind the Tokyo Bay Plan's extension of the city out into the water, and its afterlife in later megastructure thinking
- How the Yoyogi stadiums resolved structural ambition against ceremonial demand in the run-up to the 1964 Olympics
About the author
Seng Kuan is project associate professor and director of the international Architectural Education Platform at the University of Tokyo, and teaches regularly at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He has written extensively on Japan's postwar architectural culture. Yukio Lippit is professor of the history of art and architecture at Harvard University.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Dimensions: 25 × 20.7 cm
- Pages: 192
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9783037783108
- Publisher: Lars Müller Publishers
- Publication date: 2012
Perfect for
Readers of twentieth-century Japanese architecture, students and researchers working on Metabolism or postwar urbanism, and anyone tracing how a single practice came to carry the weight of a nation's international reputation.