Kenzo Tange was a influential Japanese architect and urban planner in the postwar period. He helped define Japan's emergence into modernism after WWII. Tange developed the concept of "metabolism" where cities and buildings are ever-changing and organic, with modular replaceable parts. One of his most famous works applying these ideas was the 1967 Shizuoka Press and Broadcasting Centre, which had modular steel office units cantilevered from a central core that could potentially be replaced over time. Tange's 1960 Plan for Tokyo Bay proposed a linear series of interlocking loops expanding across the bay as a symbolic representation of how cities can continuously expand and regenerate internally through metabolic processes.

1. KENZO TANGE
Samana Guruprasad

2. As one of the eldest in a long line of architects that have made Japan one of the most revered
countries in architecture, Pritzker-Prize winning architect Kenzō Tange helped define Japan’s
post-WWII emergence into Modernism. Though he was trained as an architect, Tange was equally
as influential as an urban planner giving him significant influence in Japan and around the world
at both large and small scales.
SOME OF HIS POPULAR WORKS ARE:
Hiroshima peace centre:
This memorial was built for the bomb victims.

3. METABOLISM
In the 1960s a group of Japanese architectsdreamed of future cities and produced exciting new
ideas. The visions of Kurokawa Kisho, Kikutake Kiyonori, Maki Fumihiko, and
other architects who had come under the influence of Tange Kenzo gave birth to
an architectural movement that was called "Metabolism
Metabolist architects and designers believed that cities and buildings are not static entities, but
are ever-changing—organic with a "metabolism." Post-war structures that accommodated
population growth were thought to have a limited lifespan and should be designed and built to
be replaced. Metabolically designed architecture is built around a spine-like infrastructure with
prefabricated, replaceable cell-like parts—easily attached and readily removable when their
lifespan is over. These 1960s avant-garde ideas became known as Metabolism.
Metabolist is the name of the group, in which each member proposes future designs of the world
comes through their designs and concrete illustrations. We see human society as a vital process
– a continuous development of the atom to the nebula. The reason we use a term as biological
metabolism, is that we believe that design and technology should be a trigger for human society.
We will not accept metabolism as a natural process, but try to actively encourage the
development of our society Metabolist through our proposals.

4. SHIZUOKA PRESS AND
BROADCASTING CENTRE
,1967
 This building was the first spatial
realisation of Tange’s metabolistic ideas which
inspired the structural growth in the 1950s.
 The building is small in size and
encapsulates the concepts of new metabolistic
order of architecture. (Refer metabolism for
concept.)
 Located in the Ginza district in Tokyo.
 The building represented a new typology
that could Self-perpetuate in an organic,
vernacular in metabolistic manner.
 The site was a narrow quadrilateral which
was 189sqm and was what inspired Tange to
design in a vertical manner.
 It was made such that the capsules could be prefabricated and may perhaps be
plugged in.
UNDERGROUND FLOOR
PLAN

5. GROUND FLOOR PLAN
UPPER FLOOR PLAN
SECTION
 The infrastructural core is a cylinder which is 7.7m in diameter. It is the main access
way.
 The building is totally 57m high, it has 2 stairwells, 2 lifts, kitchen and sanitary
facilities in each floor.
 The modular office units are steel boxes (3.5*3.5) stand cantilevered from the main core.

6.  13 individual offices are arranged in groups of 5 of 2 or 3 modules connected
asymmetrically to the central beam.
 Balconies are formed in the gaps between the clusters allowing for the future units to be
potentially plugged in. but the idea never materialised.
PLAN FOR TOKYO BAY
 The approach for the plan is more symbolic than practical.
 The plan was proposed at the time when many cities were undergoing urbanisation.
 This was proposed to accommodate the city’s continued expansion and internal
regeneration.
 Scheme featured a linear series of interlocking loops expanding across the bay.
 The plan has a strong expression of mobility, urban structure and linear civic access.
 The urban concept of metabolism was converted into architecture.


7. The ideals of the Metabolist Manifesto were perhaps best exhibited and advocated by Kenzo
Tange in his 1960 Plan for Tokyo. In 1958 the Tokyo Regional Plan was released which proposed
a series of satellite cities and general decentralization as the solution to Tokyo’s rapid population
boom (rising from 3.5 million in 1945 to 10 million in 1960). Tange argued that the movement
that the automobile introduced into urban life had changed peoples’ perception of space, and that
this required a new spatial order for the city in the form of the megastructure, not simply a
continuation of the radial zoning status quo. He proposed a linear megastructure based on a
‘fixed’ open network of highways and subways around which a ‘transient’ program would acrete
as the needs of the population dictated.
Tange incorporated urban concepts such as mobility, urban structure, linear civic axis, and city
as process into a powerful architectural language and tried to elevate them to a new notion of
the relationship between the whole and the part, and between the permanent and the transient.
However, Tange’s approached to these concepts was symbolic rather than practical, an orientation
also manifest in his later works. His vision for establishing a new spatial order for the
continuously expanding and transforming metropolis was ultimately a utopian ideal.
1) The connection between Tokyo and the proposed linear expansion: The first step in creating
the civic axis is the construction of a cycle transportation system in a height of 40 meters above
existing Tokyo that only touches the ground at points of interchanges. This system connects to all
major highways and railroads. The plan shows the beautiful integration of the new transportation
system into the existing one.
CIRCULATION WAYS

8. The traffic circulation along the civic axis: The traffic circulation system is detached from the
ground and suggests a strong separation between traffic and pedestrians. It is designed to carry
up to 5,000,000 people daily. The grid on which the street system is based on consists of squares
with side length of one kilometer. The system allows for a step by step expansion from Tokyo to
the other side of Tokyo bay. Public buildings are located between the two parallel highways
while residential areas are attach from the outside.
The two main shapes of business buildings: The business buildings are also detached from the
ground and sit on so called "cores" that are organized on a grid consisting of squares with side
length of 200 meters. The height of the core's ranges among 150 and 200 meters and leaves
approximately 40 meters open space below the buildings. While one of the building types (A)
relies strictly on the grid the other (B) has the shape of a spine pointing to public open spaces.
The perpendicular organic growth of the residential area: The residential buildings (C) are
attached to the civic axis through a perpendicular street system. Like leaves of a tree the
residential area seems to grow away from the civic axis. The buildings reside on huge platforms
on the water and propose the old relationship between the population of Tokyo and the sea. The
buildings appear random in size and position but alike in shape
VIEW OF COMMERCIAL AND RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS

9. SECTIONS OF RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS
SECTION AND PLAN OF THE COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS