Kenzo Tange
Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate
1987

Kenzo Tange was born in the small city of Imabari, Shikoku Island, Japan. He won the Pritzker Prize at the age of 74. Although becoming an architect was beyond his wildest dreams as a boy, it was Le Corbusier's work that stirred his imagination so that in 1935, he became a student in the Architecture Department of Tokyo University. 

In 1946, he became an assistant professor at Tokyo University, and organized the Tange Laboratory. His students included Fumihiko Maki, Koji Kamiya, Arata Isozaki, Kisho Kurokawa, and Taneo Oki. 

Tange was in charge of the reconstruction of Hiroshima. His Peace Park and Centre made the city symbolic of the human longing for peace. 

In the year in which he won the Pritzker Prize, Tange revealed his plans for the new Tokyo City Hall Complex. Since built, the complex comprises an assembly hall, a civic plaza, a park, and two tower buildings. 

Tange has been a guest professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as a lecturer at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Washington University, Illinois Institute of Technology, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Universities of Alabama and Toronto. 

The thesis for his doctorate in 1959 was "Spatial Structure in a Large City," an interpretation of urban structure on the basis of people's movements commuting to and from work. 

His "Plan for Tokyo 1960" was the Tange Team's logical response to these problems, giving thought to the nature of the urban structure that would permit growth and change. His Tokyo Plan 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. 

Other urban design and planning projects were begun in 1967 for the Fiera District of Bologna, Italy, and for a new town with residences for 60,000 in Catania, Italy. With all of his activity in Italy, it is not surprising that Olivetti retained him to design their Japanese headquarters. 

For his Tokyo Cathedral of Saint Mary, he visited several medieval Gothic examples. "After experiencing their heaven-aspiring grandeur and ineffably mystical spaces," he says, "I began to imagine new spaces, and wanted to create them by means of modern technology." 

Yamanishi Broadcasting and Press Center in Kofu, Japan uses many of Tange's new theories—cylinders house staircases, elevators, air conditioning and electrical equipment systems. The horizontal spaces connecting them are likened to the buildings along a street. Some plots are vacant and others are occupied. The most important aspect was the expansion potential. Open spaces between floors which now serve as terraces and roof gardens could be enclosed when needed. 

Tange's only completed project in the United States is his expansion of the Minneapolis Art Museum, originally designed in 1911 by McKim Mead & White in the neoclassic style. Completed in 1975, the expansion, almost doubling the size of the original 120,000 square foot structure, was accomplished with large symmetrical wings. 

In Singapore, Tange has a number of major buildings completed: the Overseas Union Bank, the GB Building, the Telecommunications Centre, and the Nanyang Technological Institute. 

The Akasaka Prince Hotel in Tokyo has become an important landmark. Others include the Sogetsu Center, the Hanae Mori Building, the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of History, the reconstruction of parts of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, the Tohin School, the Ehime Prefectural Culture Center — and new projects that are still in the design stage, such as the Yokohama Museum of Art, and the Tokyo Headquarters of the United Nations University. 

In all of his projects, there is a recurrent theme that Tange has verbalized, "Architecture must have something that appeals to the human heart, but even then, basic forms, spaces and appearances must be logical. Creative work is expressed in our time as a union of technology and humanity. The role of tradition is that of a catalyst, which furthers a chemical reaction, but is no longer detectable in the end result. Tradition can, to be sure, participate in a creation, but it can no longer be creative itself." 

Go to the top of this page.

---

Citation from the Pritzker Jury 

Given talent, energy, and a sufficiently long career, one may pass from being a breaker of new ground to becoming a classic. This has been the happy fate of Kenzo Tange, who in his eight decade is celebrated as an architect of international reputation. Along with his practice, he has been a leading theoretician of architecture and an inspiring teacher; among the well-known architects who have studied under him are Fumihiko Maki and Arata Isozaki. His stadiums for the Olympic Games held in Tokyo in 1964 are often described as among the most beautiful structures built in the twentieth century. In preparing a design, Tange arrives at shapes that lift our hearts because they seem to emerge from some ancient and dimly remembered past and yet are breathtakingly of today. 

Go to the top of this page.

---

Kenzo Tange's Acceptance Speech

It was more than a quarter century ago that I started talking about the importance of communication and information in modern society. I said that they w6uld transcend the importance we place on production. In the 1970's, because of the energy crisis, our values — at least in Japan — shifted from material things to the non-physical, and even spiritual considerations. 

That shift took place not just in architecture, but in daily life, as people tended to prefer the immaterial to the material. With de-emphasis on industrialization and the advent of the "information-communication society," the fundamentally rational and functional philosophy of the preceding period changed, and people sought things that appeal to the emotions and the senses. 

In architecture, the demand was no longer for box-like forms, but for buildings that have something to say to the human emotions. That new demand has had an effect on the designs of everything, from small window displays to streetscapes to buildings. 

The term Post-Modernism is used to describe this trend in general. I feel, however, that in its actual presentation, Post-Modernism is no more than a mere eclectic mixture of aesthetic elements - modern and ancient, or Eastern and Western - that have already reached an impasse. 

My belief is that at present Post-Modernism has not found, but must find a way out of that impasse. And since, I myself am seeking a clue, even a very small one, that will shed a little light on an answer, I know tile task is not easy. 

I am aware of changes gradually taking place in my own designs as part of my thinking on this matter. The Tokyo Headquarters of the United Nations University and the new Tokyo Metropolitan Office Complex, reflect that process. In both instances, there is a powerful need for symbolism and that means the architecture must have something that appeals to the human heart. Nevertheless, the basic forms, spaces, and appearances must be logical. Designs of purely arbitrary nature cannot be expected to last long. 

Technological considerations are of great importance to architecture and cities in the informational society. The development of so-called "intelligent buildings" is a natural consequence and today's society will demand that whole districts and cities themselves become "intelligent" in the same way as the individual buildings. 

We then will require, and expect, advanced technological equipment that, instead of finding expression in building exteriors, will be realized as part of concealed, interior functions. 

Still another aspect of architecture and cities in our informational/communication society is inter-architectural relations. In the industrial society, strong emphasis on costs and intense demand for functional sufficiency of individual buildings meant that less thought was given to large functional units, including the building's neighboring structures and surroundings. 

I think it is difficult to determine which of the two is more important, but in a society that places great stress on communications, relationships with the surroundings probably deserve as much consideration as the functional sufficiency of the individual building. 

I believe the development of a new architectural style will result from further study and work on the three elements that I have discussed: human, emotional, and sensual elements; technologically intelligent elements; and social-communicational structure of the space. 

In my opinion, further consideration of those views will help us find a way out of the current impasse, and reveal to us the kinds of buildings and cities required by the informational society. We must attempt to discover a new style suitable for our time to express a system of consistent aesthetic elements from the three that I have mentioned, if we are to overcome the eclecticism of the present transitional architectural expressions. 

I accept this award with humility because in some ways I am still in search of an answer to what buildings will best serve in what I call the information or communications society. And it is truly satisfying to receive this acknowledgement of a distinguished jury panel, especially in this excellent architectural space, I mean in this space by Louis Kahn, whose work I admire, and until his death, was one of my close friends. 

Go to the top of this page.

---

Remarks by Fumihiko Maki  on Kenzo Tange 

After 300 years of virtual isolation under the Tokugawa Shogunate, Japan embarked on a remarkable process of modernization with the Meiji Restoration. This process not only transformed the visible aspects of the country, but wrought a profound change in the Japanese psyche. Until then, a sense of the past had always been implicit in the Japanese notion of the present. The acceptance of modernization added a new temporal dimension. The here and now came to be colored by the anticipation of tomorrow. 

For the last 120 years, a time marked by continual and radical change, Japanese architects have attempted to chart the future, each in his own way. The Japanese architect who has given expression to a personal vision of the future with the greatest confidence and power of persuasion is undoubtedly Kenzo Tauge. 

For the Japanese of the early Meiji Era, the West was the future made manifest, but this has not been the case for Tange. An ability to distill the very essence of the modern spirit is wedded to a deep understanding of traditional Japanese culture, and these two aspects of his character are already evident in the early masterpieces such as the Hiroshima Peace Center and the Kagawa Prefectural Government Office. 

The National Gymnasium for the Tokyo Olympics of 1964 was a magnificent product of twentieth century structural technology, as well as a bold and original conception of space. It is one of the landmarks of modern architectural history and assured the highest international reputation for Tange. 

In the twenty-odd years since then, Tange has been active on five continents and has realized numerous major projects. Now in his eighth decade, he remains, astonishingly, one of the most productive architects in the world. The secret of his energy and youthful spirit is surely the confidence and hope with which he always regards the future. The new Tokyo City Hall Complex, soon to undergo construction, will no doubt be a splendid addition to an already illustrious oeuvre and serve as an apt symbol for the modernization of Japan.