TANGE, Kenzo

(1913-2005)

   Kenzo Tange, one of the premier 20th-century architects from Japan, witnessed the development of his home country out of the devastation of war and into a prosperous, modern world power with international economic interests. Tange's modernist architecture therefore reflects the worldwide cultural developments that occurred during the second half of the century. Born in Osaka in 1913, Tange went to the University of Tokyo, where he was introduced to the architecture of Le Corbusier. In 1946 he opened the Tange Laboratory to engage Japanese architects in the broader international architectural arena.

   In 1949, Tange's architecture became known worldwide with his designs for the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and Museum. The central building, raised on pilotis in the style of Le Corbusier, is reached via a bridge designed by Isamu Noguchi. The concrete structure of the museum follows the International style, but with screened windows found in traditional Japanese architecture, while the central monument is designed in the shape of a parabolic arch. This commission, with its blend of technical innovations, traditional architectural elements, and an organic aesthetic focus, set the stage for Tange's future work. In the 1960s, Tange became interested in the integration of his technical designs with more spiritual considerations and a focus on urban plans. His National Gymnasium Complex in Yoyogi Park, Tokyo, built for the 1964 Olympics, reflects this vision. The arena, made for swimming and diving competitions, is designed as two semicircles connected slightly off-center from each other, with either end elongated to form two beautiful curves. The roof is suspended on two massive steel cables connected to concrete piers, giving the overall impression of a shell. The 1972 Munich Olympic Arena built by Otto Frei was clearly inspired by Tange's arena design.

   In the 1970s, Tange was involved in several urban projects, including new town projects in Bologna and Catania, Italy. His expansion of the Minneapolis Art Museum (1975) doubled its space and gave Tange a foothold in the United States, where he taught for several years at various different universities.

   When Tange won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1987, he was working in Tokyo on several structures to revitalize the downtown area. These buildings include Saint Mary's Cathedral, the Akasaka Prince Hotel, and the City Hall Complex. The hotel is designed as a skyscraper that steps outward from its central rectangle into a series of wings that break forward to create a jagged U-shaped building. This monumental structure moves away from the traditional box-like format of skyscrapers to carve out an entrance area in keeping with Tange's interest in the creation of human-scaled urban space. His Fuji Television Building, built in Tokyo in 1996, achieves the same innovative result with its large-scale rectangular design cut out in the middle with an open, grid-like structure that links the two wings and supports internal walkways, an elevator shaft, and a circular auditorium in the upper left quadrant of the building. The unique design of this structure gives the appearance of a lightweight but strong steel skeleton with large windows that light the interior rooms and an efficiency of movement between the internal spaces via a series of walkways on each level. The discreet, serious appearance of earlier corporate structures is replaced here by a more whimsical yet still highly visually organized design. Tange's Fuji Television Building, with its blend of technical and aesthetic considerations, thus provided a new vision for corporate architecture of the next century.