Tange Kenzo
(b. 1913), Japanese architect. Kenzo Tange was Japan's leading postwar architect and the first Japanese architect to win the prestigious Pritzker Prize. Beginning in 1938, Tange spent four years in the office of Kunio Maekawa (1905–1986), a pioneer of modern architecture and disciple of French architect Le Corbusier (1887–1965). Upon leaving Maekawa's employ, Tange returned to his alma mater, the University of Tokyo, to further study modernist architecture's spatial organization and urban scale.
Kenzo Tenge with his first sculpture, "Theme Tower," in New York City in April 1966. (BETTMANN/CORBIS)Following World War II, Tange's competition-winning proposal for the Hiroshima Peace Park brought his first commission and immediately established him in international architectural circles; he was the first of Japan's architects to receive such recognition.
Several of his subsequent works accommodated the international community, most notably his 1964 designs for the Olympics, as well as St. Mary's Cathedral (1964). Moreover, Tange established a vocabulary for postwar democracy in local government offices (Tokyo City Hall, 1957; Kagawa Prefectural Offices, 1959; and Kurashiki City Hall, 1960). Many of these buildings were unusual for their large public spaces, intended for gatherings of an unprecedented scale.
Several of Tange's most important designs, including his 1961 plan for Tokyo Bay and his 1964 proposal for the Tsukiji district, were never built, and in the 1970s, he turned his attention abroad. In the 1980s, however, Tange returned to Japan and produced a number of works that fulfilled his earlier intentions, including the New Tokyo City Hall (1991) and the United Nations University Building (1992). Tange's early work was a remarkable blending of bold, sculpted concrete forms and delicate detailing he ascribed to Yayoi traditions. In his later buildings, however, his work lost its delicacy and focused on monumentality.
Further Reading
Bettinotti, Massimo, ed. (1996) Kenzo Tange Architecture And
Urban Design, 1946–1996. Milan, Italy: Electa.
Boyd, Robin. (1962) Kenzo Tange. New York: George Braziller.
Gropius, Walter, and Kenzo Tange, with photographs by Yasuhiro Ishimoto. (1960) Katsura: Tradition and Creation in Japanese Architecture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Kawazoe, Noboru, and Kenzo Tange. (1965) Ise: Prototype of Japanese Architecture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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