🏛️ArtArchitecture
🏠 Home🌐 中文
ArchitectureBUILT
🗼

Kenzo Tange

Original nameKenzo Tange

Father of modern Japanese architecture, who fused tradition and the modern

Another Set of Rules for Building the World · Eastern Building
Japanese ModernismYoyogi GymnasiumMetabolismPostwar Rebuilding

Who they are

The founder and leader of modern Japanese architecture, the key figure who brought Japanese architecture onto the world stage after the Second World War. He successfully fused the spirit of traditional Japanese architecture (the clear expression of structure, the relation to nature) with Western modernism, walking a modern architectural path of Japan’s own. The Yoyogi National Gymnasium he designed for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics holds up a wave-like undulating roof with an elegant suspension structure, hailed as one of the most beautiful buildings of the twentieth century. He was also the spiritual leader of the "Metabolism" movement, arguing that city and building should be able to grow and renew like living organisms. As a Pritzker laureate, he trained a great many Japanese architects who won world renown — the source of the constellation of contemporary Japanese architecture.

Primary sourcesthe Yoyogi National Gymnasiumthe Hiroshima Peace Memorial Parkthe Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building

Key stories

Holding Up a Great Wave with a Steel Cable

The roof of the Yoyogi Gymnasium Tange designed for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics is not the usual steel frame but, like a tent, suspended from huge cables hung from high towers, forming an elegant undulating surface like a great wave, like a shell. It has both the strength of modern structure and the flowing, light rhythm of traditional Japanese architecture. This building announced to the world that postwar Japan could build first-rate architecture uniting technology and poetry.

Relationships

Mentor
🌫️Toyo Ito　founded modern Japanese architecture, blessing Toyo Ito and other later masters

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

Father of modern Japanese architectureTange fused Japanese tradition and Western modernism, the Yoyogi Gymnasium hailed as one of the most beautiful buildings of the twentieth century; as leader of "Metabolism" and a Pritzker laureate, he trained a group of world-renowned Japanese architects.

Appears in

Eastern BuildingKenzo Tange: The Yoyogi Gymnasium
← Back to Figures