[東京都 p12] 丹下健三 Tange Kenzō

"Kenzo Tange (丹下健三, Tange Kenzō, September 4, 1913 – March 22, 2005) was a Japanese architect, and winner of the 1987 Pritzker Prize for architecture. He was one of the most significant architects of the 20th century, combining traditional Japanese styles with modernism, and designed major buildings on five continents. Kenzo Tange was also an influential protagonist of the movement structuralism. He said: 'It was, I believe, around 1959 or at the beginning of the sixties that I began to think about what I was later to call structuralism'."
-- wikipedia : kenzo tange

"Tange's work has involved research into town-planning, including a design for the expansion of Tokyo based on rapid-transit systems, areas of high-density housing, and a major extension of the urban fabric into the sea at Tokyo Bay (published as A Plan for Tokyo, 1960). He also developed schemes for multi-purpose blocks linked in various ways. His Yamanashi Press and Broadcasting Centre, Kofu (1964–7), has 16 cylindrical services- and stair-towers acting as huge columns, with floors spanning between them according to their functional requirements. This, and the Tokyo plan, were potent influences on Metabolism ... He obliquely criticized Functionalism, stating that only the beautiful can be functional."
-- Art Encyclopedia: Kenzo Tange


"... for some time I had devoted thought to communications between architectural space and the human spirit ... symbols are crystallisations of images of historical periods in the evolutions of civilizations ... There is a powerful need for symbolism, and that means the architecture must have something that appeals to the human heart."
-- Kenzo Tange


"His 'Plan for Tokyo' was Tange's logical response to the nature of the urban structure that would permit growth and change. It received enormous attention world-wide for its new concepts of extending the growth of the city out over the bay, using bridges, man made islands, floating parking and megastructures."
-- reference