Kenzo Tange

September 4, 1913 - March 22, 2005

Biography
 Kenzo Tange was born in Osaka, Japan in 1913.
 He graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1938
and worked for Kunio Maekawa until 1941.
 He studied city planning at the graduate school at the
University of Tokyo after which he assumed a
position as an assistant professor of architecture.
 He received a degree in engineering in 1959.
 Two years later Tange established Kenzo Tange +
Urtec which later became Kenzo Tange Associates.
 He served as professor of urban engineering at the
University of Tokyo from 1963 to 1974, when he
retired as professor emeritus.
Kenzo Tange

 He was a winner of the 1987 Pritzker Prize 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.
 Tange's early designs attempted to combine
modernism with traditional Japanese forms of
architecture.
 In the late 1960s he rejected this earlier regionalism
in favor of an abstract international style. Although his
styles have transformed over time, he has
consistently generated designs based on a clear
structural order.
Hiroshima Peace Park and Peace
Memorial
 In 1949 he won the competition to re-design Hiroshima,
following its atomic bombing in 1945. His design for the Peace
Park and Peace Memorial owes much to Le Corbusier, and is
often called ‘the spritual core of the city’.
 The building is raised up on pillars, its structure a framework of
exposed concrete. The complex as a whole has a monumental
quality. There are two secondary buildings, one on either side,
consisting of an auditoruim, a hotel, an exhibition gallery, a
library, offices and a conference centre to the west, and an
assembly hall with capacity for 2,500 people to the east...
 Together they form a kind of screen for the square of Peace,
which extends to the north, in which up to 50,000 people can
congregate around the monument to Peace. The monument...in
the form of a hyperbolic parabola, brings together modern
tendencies and techniques and the ancient form of the Haniwa,
the traditional tombs of the rulers of old Japan.
Hiroshima Peace Park and Peace
Memorial
Hiroshima Peace Memorial
museum and community center
Gymnasium for Tokyo Olympics
in1964
 Tange won international fame for his design for the gymnasium
for the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. His Pritzker Prize
citation described it as "among the most beautiful buildings of
the 20th century".
 designed in 1960 and built in 1964 to house swimming and
diving events in the Olympics.
 , on a par with the highest achievements of the Japanese
tradition.
 The plan [of the larger stadium] is in the form of two semi-
circles, slightly displaced in relation to one another, with their
unconnecting ends elongated into points. The entrances are
located in the concave sides. The roof is supported on two
reinforced concrete pillars, and is made up of a system of steel
cables onto which enameled steel plates are then soldered. The
curving form of the roof serves to make it more resistant to wind,
which can reach hurricane force in this region.
Gymnasium for Tokyo Olympics
in1964
Gymnasium for Tokyo Olympics
in1964
Urban Design
 He was also known for his ‘Tokyo Plan’ of 1960,
which proposed a radical redesign of the city.
Although not fully implemented, it influenced
architects worldwide.
 Reflecting the influence of Le Corbusier, his urban
philosophy dictates the generation of comprehensive
cities filled with megastructures that combine service
and transportation elements. Although closely
associated with the Metabolist movement because of
his functionalist ideas, he never belonged to the
group.
Fuji TV headquarters in Odaiba -
known for its eccentric architecture.
Tokyo Metropolitan Government
Office, Shinjuku-ku Tokyo