Kenzo Tange (Independent)

[Hyfler/Rosner]

Leading architect of post-war Japan
26 March 2005

The architect Kenzo Tange was worshipped in Japan as one who
rescued the war-ravaged nation and made it rise again from
the ashes of the atom bombs.

Tange studied architecture at Tokyo University, where
eventually he became a full professor (among his best
students were Isozaki Arata and Kurokawa Kisho). After
graduation, he began working in the studio of Maekawa Kunio,
who for two years had been a favourite pupil of Le
Corbusier. This great architect was also Tange's idol, but
Tange's originality lay in providing a more human expression
to Le Corbusier's extreme purist style. He sought to achieve
an architecture of open space - a daring concept in a land
that many Japanese consider too small.

In 1949 Tange won the competition to build the Peace
Memorial Park and Buildings in Hiroshima, finished in 1955
and now a shrine visited by millions every year. This was
followed by a number of revolutionary government office
buildings for Tokyo (1957), Kagawa (1958) and Kurashiki
(1960).

The Tokyo Olympics in 1964 gave Tange a great opportunity
when he constructed an edifice of surreal beauty, the Yoyogi
National Stadium, which synthesised traditional and modern
Japanese architecture. Its paired structures are crowned by
long, sweeping roofs suspended on gracefully slung metal
cables, giving a haunting impression of archaic temple
forms. They have been described as "the most beautiful
buildings on earth". They seemed to symbolise the beginnings
of Japan's economic recovery from the disasters of the
Second World War. The same year saw the creation of Tokyo's
Santa Maria Cathedral.

In 1965, Tange took an important role in the reconstruction
of Skopje in Yugoslavia, which had been devastated by an
earthquake, a natural phenomenon with which he was all too
familiar in Japan. Then came a series of major native works
like the Yamanashi Culture Hall (1966) and the Japan Expo
Master Plan (1970). He began accepting commissions from
abroad: the Kuwait International Airport (1979), the Saudi
Arabia Royal Palace (1982) and a series of works ranging
from Nigeria, Singapore and Naples to the International
Fairs Centre at Bologna and the Baltimore Inner Harbour
project.

Back in Japan, he designed the Hanae Mori building (1978),
the Turkish embassy (1979) and the massive new Tokyo
metropolitan government offices (1991). The last-named is a
huge twin-towered edifice that the Japanese started calling
"Notre Dame de Tokyo". It was again a new departure in
Tange's ever-changing styles, neither functional in concept
nor post-modern in form. The immense structure's imposing
twin-tower silhouette and the grandeur of its classic marble
façade gave rise to impassioned debates about a skyscraper
that rose well above the limits of Japanese architecture and
seemed to be impinging ominously upon the national
consciousness.

In 1998, I paid a visit to Nice, where one of Tange's
smaller works, the Musée des Arts Asiatiques on the
Promenade des Anglais, provides a striking contrast to the
monumentalism of his other later work. It is a little jewel
of architectural geometry consisting essentially of four
cubes of pure white marble surmounted by a pyramidal glass
roof. The cube is an oriental symbol of the earth. Tange
wanted to give this work the grace of a swan floating on a
lake, and its cool reflection upon the waters does indeed
suggest this tranquil image of meditation, even though it is
now obscured by an enormous bank building rising among a
clutter of pseudo-Californian urbanism in the shadow of Nice
airport.

In 1987, Tange was awarded the Pritzker Prize - equivalent
to a Nobel prize for architecture - saying in his acceptance
speech that he had struggled to reconcile the forms of the
future with his reverence for the artistic past of his
native land. He declared that "Post-modernism is no more
than a mere eclectic mixture of aesthetic elements - modern
and ancient, or eastern and western - that have already
reached an impasse."

He went on to say that it was his artistic duty to free art
from this impasse, at the same time seeking constant change.
"I do not wish to repeat what I have done," he stated. "I
find that every project is a springboard to the next, always
advancing forward from the past to the ever-changing future.
That is my next challenge."

James Kirkup

Kenzo Tange, architect: born Imabari, Japan 4 September
1913; Professor, University of Tokyo 1946-74 (Emeritus);
twice married (one son, and one daughter deceased); died
Tokyo 22 March 2005.