Kenzo Tange Biography, Buildings and Best Books

Kenzo Tange (1913-2005) was a Japanese architect, urban planner and teacher who defined the architecture of postwar Japan. Combining the lessons of Le Corbusier with the structural clarity of traditional Japanese building, he designed monuments of reconstruction and national renewal, mentored the Metabolist generation and became the first Japanese laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize.

Education and Early Career

Tange graduated in architecture from the University of Tokyo in 1938 and worked in the office of Kunio Maekawa, a former assistant of Le Corbusier. Returning to the university, he founded the Tange Laboratory, which became a training ground for architects such as Fumihiko Maki, Arata Isozaki and Kisho Kurokawa.

Hiroshima and Postwar Reconstruction

In 1949 Tange won the competition for the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. The museum, raised on pilotis and aligned on an axis with the ruined Atomic Bomb Dome, was completed in 1955 and established him as the leading architect of a Japan rebuilding after the war.

Tradition and Modernity

Through works such as the Kagawa Prefectural Government Office, Tange translated the post-and-beam structure of Japanese temples into reinforced concrete. For the 1964 Tokyo Olympics he designed the Yoyogi National Gymnasium, whose suspension roofs became a symbol of modern Japan, and in the same year completed St. Mary’s Cathedral in Tokyo.

Metabolism and the City

Tange’s Plan for Tokyo 1960 proposed a linear city extending across Tokyo Bay and inspired the Metabolist movement. Later he worked worldwide, with master plans and buildings in the Middle East, Africa and Singapore, and returned to Tokyo for the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building (1991) and the Fuji Television Building (1996). He received the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1987.