Kenzo Tange Architecture for the World Cover
1 / 10

Seng Kuan and Yukio Lippit (eds.)

Kenzō Tange – Architecture for the World

Kenzō Tange (1913–2005) is a peerless figure among twentieth-century Japanese architects, unmatched in his talent, influence, and versatility. A leading force of the Metabolist movement, he was the first non-Western architect whose works would be embraced as universal in value. This unique assemblage of new scholarship by an international team of experts reframes Tange according to the contingencies of Japanese modernism as well as contemporary discourses of cultural identity, technology, urbanization, and the synthesis of the arts. Case studies on celebrated works—Hiroshima, Tokyo Bay Plan, and Yoyogi Stadiums—clarify Tange’s wide-ranging interests and design methodology. Abundantly illustrated with archival drawings and period photographs, this volume provides fresh and compelling perspectives on the practices, discourses, and production contexts of Tange’s work as well as the architecture and urbanism of postwar Japan. Kenzo Tange—Architecture for the World represents the most serious and comprehensive reassessment of Tange in the English language in decades.

Kenzō Tange (1913–2005) is a peerless figure among twentieth-century Japanese architects, unmatched in his talent, influence, and versatility. A leading force of the Metabolist movement, he was the first non-Western architect whose works would be embraced as universal in value. This unique assemblage of new scholarship by an international team of experts reframes Tange according to the contingencies of Japanese modernism as well as contemporary discourses of cultural identity, technology, urbanization, and the synthesis of the arts. Case studies on celebrated works—Hiroshima, Tokyo Bay Plan, and Yoyogi Stadiums—clarify Tange’s wide-ranging interests and design methodology. Abundantly illustrated with archival drawings and period photographs, this volume provides fresh and compelling perspectives on the practices, discourses, and production contexts of Tange’s work as well as the architecture and urbanism of postwar Japan. Kenzo Tange—Architecture for the World represents the most serious and comprehensive reassessment of Tange in the English language in decades.

«Ein haptisch wie inhaltlich exzellenter Band, der das Wissen um Tanges Oeuvre und Komplexität bereichert, und ganz nebenbei auch ein formidabler Baustein zum Verständnis der gegenwärtigen japa­nischen Architektur.» 

– Bauwelt 4/2014

Edited by Seng Kuan and Yukio Lippit, co-published by Harvard University Graduate School of Design

Design: Integral Lars Müller

25 x 20,7 cm, 9 ¾ x 8 ¼ in

192 pages, 186 illustrations

hardback

2012, 978-3-03778-310-8, English
Japan Portrait Pritzker Prize
CHF 50.00
Out of stock

Seng Kuan

Seng Kuan is project associate professor and director of the international Architectural Education Platform at the University of Tokyo. He teaches regularly at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and has written extensively on Japan's postwar architectural culture. He is coeditor of Kenzō Tange: Architecture for the World (2012) and contributed to Kiyonori Kikutake: Between Land and Sea (2016). He previously taught at Washington University in St. Louis.

Yukio Lippit

Yukio Lippit is professor of the history of art and architecture at Harvard University. He is author of Painting of the Realm: The Kano House of Painters in Seventeenth-Century Japan (University of Washington Press, 2012).