was a Japanese architect. Born in Sakai and raised in China and southern Japan, Tange was inspired from an early age by the work of Le Corbusier and designed his first buildings under Imperial Japan. He first achieved recognition for his projects to reconstruct the destroyed cities of postwar Japan, particularly Hiroshima, where he designed the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. His engagement with the Congres Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne in the 1950s made him one of the first Japanese architects to achieve international recognition.
Renowned for synthesizing traditional Japanese styles with modernism, Tange's work was emblematic of the Japanese postwar boom. However, he built major projects on five continents. He was a forerunner, mentor, and patron of the metabolist movement. He was also known as an ambitious, original urban planner whose ideas inspired the reconstruction of cities including Skopje. Tange would continue designing buildings until his death in 2005.
Tange won awards for his contributions to architecture, including the Royal Gold Medal in 1965, the AIA Gold Medal in 1966, the Praemium Imperiale for Architecture in 1993, and the Pritzker Prize, the "Nobel Prize of architecture", in 1987.
Early life and education
Born on 4 September 1913 in Sakai, Japan, Tange spent his early life in the Chinese cities of Hankou and Shanghai; he and his family returned to Japan after learning of the death of one of his uncles. In contrast to the green lawns and red bricks in their Shanghai abode, the Tange family took up residence in a thatched roof farmhouse in Imabari on the island of Shikoku.Stewart (1987), p. 170
After finishing middle school, Tange moved to Hiroshima in 1930 to attend high school. It was here that he first encountered the works of Swiss modernist, Le Corbusier. His discovery of the drawings of the Palace of the Soviets in a foreign art journal convinced him to become an architect. Although he graduated from high school, Tange's poor results in mathematics and physics meant that he had to pass entrance exams to qualify for admission to the prestigious universities. He spent two years doing so and during that time, he read extensively about western philosophy. Tange also enrolled in the film division at Nihon University's art department to avoid Japan's drafting of young men to its military and seldom attended classes.Stewart (1987), p. 170
In 1935 Tange began the tertiary studies he desired at the University of Tokyo's architecture department. He studied under Hideto Kishida and Yoshikazu Uchida. Although Tange was fascinated by the photographs of the Katsura villa that sat on Kishida's desk, his work was inspired by Le Corbusier. His graduation project was a seventeen-hectare (42-acre) development set in Tokyo's Hibiya Park.Stewart (1987), p. 171
Early career After graduating from the university, Tange started to work as an architect at the office of Kunio Maekawa. During his employment, he travelled to Manchuria, participating in an architectural design competition for a bank, and toured Japanese-occupied Rehe on his return. When the Second World War started, he left Maekawa to rejoin the University of Tokyo as a postgraduate student. He developed an interest in urban design, and referencing only the resources available in the university library, he embarked on a study of Greek and Roman marketplaces.
His career would begin in earnest by winning a string of national competitions. In 1941, he won the People's House Design Competition. In 1942, Tange entered a competition for the design of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere Memorial Hall. He was awarded first prize for a design that would have been situated at the base of Mount Fuji; the hall he conceived was a fusion of Shinto shrine architecture and the plaza on Capitoline Hill in Rome. In 1943, he won the competition for Japan-Thai Cultural Hall. None of his winning designs were realised.Reynolds (2001), p. 126 However, Tange's earliest work represents active engagement with the nationalist paradigms of Japanese imperial architecture. In response to a 1942 questionnaire regarding his views on style and architectural policy for the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, he stated: "We must ignore both Anglo-American culture and the pre-existing cultures of the Southeast Asian Races. [...] We should start out with an unshakable conviction in the tradition and the future of the Japanese races."
Tange's pre-1945 success was a clear liability in the immediate postwar years, and was rarely noted by critics until the 1867s. Although his postwar style departed from his nationalistic early work, scholars have nonetheless identified continuities in Tange's early and later work, specifically in his aims to formulate a specifically Japanese style of modern architecture.
In 1946, Tange became an assistant professor at the University of Tokyo. In 1962, he opened the Urban Design Laboratory, and was promoted to professor of the Department of Urban Engineering in 1963. His students included Sachio Otani, Kisho Kurokawa, Arata Isozaki, Hajime Yatsuka and Fumihiko Maki.
Selected projects Postwar Reconstruction and Hiroshima Peace Memorial
Tange's interest in urban studies put him in a good position to handle post war reconstruction. In the summer of 1946 he was invited by the War Damage Rehabilitation Board to put forward a proposal for certain war damaged cities. He submitted plans for Hiroshima and Maebashi.Yorifusa (2003), p. 29 His design for an airport in Kanon, Hiroshima was accepted and built, but a seaside park in Ujina was not.Norioki (2003), p. 92
The Hiroshima authorities took advice about the city's reconstruction from foreign consultants, and in 1947 Tam Deling, an American park planner, suggested they build a Peace Memorial and preserve buildings situated near ground zero, that point directly below the explosion of the atomic bomb.Norioki (2003), p. 96 In 1949 the authorities enacted the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Reconstruction Act, which gave the city access to special grant aid, and in August 1949, an international competition was announced for the design of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.Diedfendorf, Hein & Yorifusa (2003), p. 95
Tange was awarded first prize for a design that proposed a museum whose axis runs through the park, intersecting Peace Boulevard and the atomic bomb dome. The building is raised on massive columns, which frame the view along the structure's axis.Diedfendorf, Hein & Yorifusa (2003), p. 98
Work on the Peace Center commenced in 1950. In addition to the axial nature of the design, the layout is similar to Tange's early competition arrangement for the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere Memorial Hall.
In the initial design the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum was dominated by adjoining utility buildings, which were linked to it by high-level walkways. Tange refined this concept to place the museum prominently at the centre, separate from the utility buildings (only one of which was subsequently designed by him). In addition to architectural symbolism, he thought it important for the design to centre around the building that houses the information about the atomic explosion.Kulterman (1970), p. 17
The museum is constructed from bare reinforced concrete. The primary museum floor is lifted six metres above the ground on huge piloti and is accessible via a free-standing staircase. The rhythmical facade comprises vertical elements that repeat outwards from the centre. Like the exterior, the interior is finished with rough concrete; the idea was to keep the surfaces plain so that nothing could distract the visitor from the contents of the exhibits.Kulterman (1970), p. 18
The Peace Plaza is the backdrop for the museum. The plaza was designed to allow 50 thousand people to gather around the peace monument in the centre. Tange also designed the Cenotaph monument as an arch composed of two hyperbolic paraboloids, said to be based on traditional Japanese ceremonial tombs from the Kofun Period.
Ise Shrine In 1953, Tange and architectural journalist and critic Noboru Kawazoe were invited to attend the reconstruction of the Ise Grand Shrine. The shrine is rebuilt every 20 years, and in 1953, it marked the 59th iteration of this tradition, which began in 690 by the order of Emperor Temmu. Normally the reconstruction process was a very closed affair but this time the ceremony was opened to architects and journalists to document the event. The ceremony coincided with the end of the American Occupation and it seemed to symbolise a new start in Japanese architecture. In 1965 when Tange and Kawazoe published the book Ise: Prototype of Japanese Architecture, he likened the building to a modernist structure: an honest expression of materials, a functional design and prefabricated elements.Diedfendorf, Hein & Yorifusa (2003), p. 197
Kagawa Prefectural Government Hall The Kagawa Prefectural Government Hall on the island of Shikoku was completed in 1958. Its expressive construction could be likened to the Daibutsu style seen at the Tōdai-ji in Nara.Stewart (1987), p. 207 The columns on the elevation bore only vertical loads so Tange was able to design them to be thin, maximising the surfaces for glazing. Although the hall has been called one of his finest projects,Japan Architect (2005), p. 100 it drew criticism at the time of its construction for relying too heavily on tradition.Kulterman (1970), p. 56
Tange's own home Tange's own home, designed in 1951 and completed in 1953, uses a similar skeleton structure raised off the ground as the Hiroshima Peace Museum; however, it is fused with a more traditional Japanese design that uses timber and paper. The house is based on the traditional Japanese module of the tatami mat, with the largest rooms designed to have flexibility so that they can be separated into three smaller rooms by fusuma sliding doors.Kulterman (1970), p. 28 The facade is designed with a rhythmic pattern; it comprises two types of facade designs ("a" and "b") that are ordered laterally in an a-b-a-a-b-a arrangement. The house is topped with a two-tier roof. Kazuo Shinohara's 1954 house at Kugayama is remarkably similar in its design, although it is built with steel and has a simpler rhythm in its facade.Stewart (1987), p. 197
Town Hall, Kurashiki The fortress-like town hall in Kurashiki was designed in 1958 and completed in 1960. When it was constructed it was situated on the edge of the old town centre connecting it with the newer areas of the town. Kurashiki is better known as a tourist spot for its old Machiya style houses.Kulterman (1970), p. 92
Set in an open square, the building sits on massive columns that taper inwards as they rise. The elevation consists of horizontal planks (some of which are omitted to create windows) which overlap at the corners in a "log cabin" effect. The entrance is covered with a heavy projecting concrete canopy which leads to a monumental entrance hall. The stair to this hall ascends in cantilevered straight flights to the left and right. The walls to this interior are bare shuttered concrete punctured by windows reminiscent of Le Corbusier's La Tourette. The Council Chamber is a separate building whose raked roof has seating on top of it to form an external performance space.Banham (1978), p. 82
Tokyo Bay Plan
Tokyo experienced a massive population boom in the postwar years, putting significant strain on existing urban infrastructure. The municipal government responded by establishing the National Capital Construction Committee in 1951, which focused on decentralization as a prime method to relieve population pressures. In 1958, the committee released the National Capital Region Development Plan (NCRDP), which called for the establishment of multiple satellite cities and subcentres and the development of a greenbelt around Central Tokyo, in emulation of Patrick Abercrombie's 1944 Greater London Plan.