Kenzo Tange, Hiroshima and Japanese Architecture

Volume 3 | Issue 3 | Article ID 1828 | Mar 28, 2005 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Kenzo Tange, Hiroshima and Japanese Architecture Jonathan Glancey Kenzo Tange, Hiroshima andHis finest buildings include the twin arena of Japanese Architecture the two national gymnasiums for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the Yamanashi by Jonathan Glancey 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, Tadao Ando, one of Japan's greatest living Singapore (1995) and the Tokyo architects, likes to tell the Dome hotel (2000), were realised on daunting story of the stray dog, a stately akita, that scales. Utilizing new wandered into his studio in Osaka some 20 years ago, and decided to stay. construction drawing software and older "First, I thought I would techniques, Tange was able to call her Kenzo Tange; but then I realised I couldn't kick Kenzo Tange create large scale buildings that were stylish around. So I called her Le Corbusier instead." and safe. Yet, as the prolific architect said: "We live in a world where great Kenzo Tange, the most influential figure in incompatibles co-exist: post-war Japanese the human scale and the superhuman scale, architecture, who has died aged 91, was stability and mobility, profoundly influenced by the work permanence and change, identity and of Le Corbusier. In turn, Tange's hugely anonymity, comprehensibility and impressive body of work was to universality. influence, indeed dominate, that of a younger generation of brilliant "I like to think there is something deep in our young Japanese architects up to, and including, own world of reality that Ando. will create a dynamic balance between technology and human existence, the If Tange began by imitating the late-flowering, relationship between which has a decisive sculptural concrete effect on contemporary cultural designs of the Swiss-French genius, he went on forms and social structure." to create a body of internationally recognised work that was very Ironically, as a young man, Tange did not much his own, fusing expect to become an architect. traditional Japanese forms with the very latest He was born in Osaka, and brought up, in in structural daring. modest circumstances, in the 1 3 | 3 | 0 APJ | JF small city of Imabari, on Shikoku Island. connected by a proliferation of Nevertheless, he won his way to bridges, and characterised not by buildings as the University of Tokyo's architecturesuch, but by eye-boggling department, and began working, in concrete megastructures. 1938, for Kunio Maekawa, who had practised with Le Corbusier in his Paris These great concrete concatenations, although studio in the late 1920s. never realised on the scale Tange had intended in Tokyo, were hugely During the second world war, Tange furthered influential in Britain, his studies as a graduate encouraging a generation of architects who student in Tokyo, becoming an assistant were in love with raw concrete professor at Tokyo University in and sheer scale, and were labelled "brutalists" 1946. He set up his own studio, through which by the critic Reyner such distinguished Banham. For many, Tange was the godfather, architects as Fumihiko Maki, Kisho Kurokawa or shogun, of 1960s brutalism. and Arata Isozaki passed, In fact, his most successful brutalist design, the learned, contributed and flourished. Yamanashi press and broadcasting centre, was as much a samurai His first major commission was hugelyfortress brought into the late symbolic: the replanning of the city 20th century as it was a modern concrete of Hiroshima after its destruction by Little Boy, megastructure. Intriguingly, the atomic bomb dropped although it seems all of a piece, this was a by the USAF B-29 Enola Gay on August 6 1945. determinedly indeterminate At the heart of the revived building in the sense that, theoretically at least, city, Tange built a peace centre, raised on stilt- its 16 massive like, Le Corbusier-style cylindrical towers, housing the centre's columns, or piloti, faced by a monument that services, could be greatly married ancient forms and extended, while yawning gaps left between the latest structural technology. occupied floors could be filled in with future offices and studios as required. This peacetime fusion of a traditional Haniwa tomb and a concrete Today, these gaps have been filled in with hyperbolic parabola was very much a symbol of terraces and roof gardens, the new Japan, resolutely adding to the enigmatic and unexpectedly looking to the future while proudly recalling romantic quality of this powerful the best of its pre-imperial design. past. "The role of tradition," said Tange, "is that of a As Le Corbusier long dreamed of rebuilding the catalyst which furthers centre of Paris, so Tange a chemical reaction, but is no longer detectable worked long and hard on a comprehensive, and in the end result. highly contentious, redesign Tradition can, to be sure, participate in a of his country's capital city. His plan for Tokyo creation, but it can no longer (1960) received be creative itself." worldwide attention. In practice, it would have meant projecting the city The cathedral of St Mary, Tokyo (1964), out over the bay, using man-made islands another powerful meeting of 2 3 | 3 | 0 APJ | JF historic and contemporary form and structure, US, Tange continued until he died, although he both confirms and denies retired from practice three this article of architectural faith. Tange visited years ago, to imagine how architecture could several medieval be convincingly reconciled cathedrals before producing his design. "After with the very latest communications and experiencing their building technologies. He had heaven-aspiring grandeur and ineffablydisliked the wilful excesses of postmodern mystical spaces," he said later, "I design in the 1980s, and began to imagine new spaces, and wanted to watched cautiously as a new wave of gratuitous create them by means of modern bendy, twisty buildings sprouted from city skylines worldwide in the technology." Which he did, and yet the soaring 1990s. concrete cathedral is recognisably medieval in inspiration. He was, though, quietly optimistic, considering these fashionable Outside Japan, Tange was more overtly affectations to be no more than "transitional modern, as in the examples of his architectural expressions", extension of McKim Meade and White'san accusation it would difficult to level at the Minneapolis art museum (1975), his Yamanashi press and only work in the United States, and in the office broadcasting centre or the national and hotel towers he gymnasium, Tokyo. designed for the Taiwanese capital, Taipei, and Kenzo Tange, architect, born September 4 Singapore. 1913; died March 22 2005 This is slightly abbreviated from The Guardian, An often profound thinker and learned teacher, Wednesday March 23 2005. in Japan, Canada and the Posted at Japan Focus March 25, 2005. 3.

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