Kanzo Tange

Nationality - Japan
1.0 Life and Time
1.1 Born:
Imabari , Shikoku. September
4, 1931
1.2 Died :
March 22, 2005
1.3 Education:
High School In Hiroshima

Graduated in Architecture
Courses from Tokyo Imperial
University in 1938.
In 1942, he returned back to
the University for Graduate
Course.
1.4 Profession:
• He seeked employment in 1938 in
the office of Kunio Maekawa for 4 yrs.
• While being in office, he joined
Japanese Werkbund.
• In 1946, he accepted professorship
in Tokyo University.
In 1949 ,he began his successful
private practice.
By 1957, Tange and Asso.
Adopted firm name KENZO TANGE
AND URTEC(derived from urbanist
architecture) KANZO TANGE WITH
PRIME-MINISTER LEE
(CIAM) KUANG IN 1972
1.5 Influences:
People/Places/Art & Architectural
Movements/ Period & Architectural
Style
• His first mentor, Maekawa, developing
International Style and Bauhaus Principles
under him.
• Antonin Raymond in Japan and office of Le
Corb while working on Villa Savoye and Swiss
Pavilion.
• Western Renaissance Architecture,
especially Michelangelo.
• He developed strong sense of greatness of
Rome and Greece and developed a concept
of ‘Communication Space”.
•Congress Internationaux d’architecture
Moderne
2.0 Philosophy
2.1 Architectural Theories / Styles/Principles of
Ideas/Concept/Beliefs:
He believed that Japanese are searching freedom of
expression symbolizing new postwar society free from
old technocratic regimes.
He demonstrated that unique regionalism could be
developed ,and recognized within the circumstance of
International Style.
He marked a remarked awareness of Japanese
Architectural traditions expressed through a
contemporary interpretation of architectural form.
Concept of “Communication Space”.
Young architects should be allowed in the lapse of
flights of fantasy so that architecture may progress.
Architectural expression of shift of agrarian to an
industrial to an information based society must be
considered Modernism.
2.2 Famous Quotes

"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." 
3.0 Works
3.1 Major Architectural Works
3.1.1 Hiroshima Peace Memorial Building,
Hiroshima
• Date: 1949 to 1956
• Building Type: Museum
and Community Center
• Construction System:
Concrete
• Climate: humid subtropical
• Context: Urban
• Style: Modern
• Notes: By competition.
Simple linear mass on
columns with louvered
walls
Site Plan
•The building is raised up on pillars, its structure a framework of
exposed concrete.
• The complex as a whole has a monumental quality.
•There are two secondary buildings, one on either side
•It consists of an auditorium, a hotel, an exhibition gallery, a
library, offices and a conference center to the west, and an
assembly hall with capacity for 2,500 people to the east
•Together they form a kind of screen for the square of Peace,
which extends to the north, in which up to 50,000 people can
congregate around the monument to Peace.
• The monument...in the form of a hyperbolic parabola, brings
together modern tendencies and techniques and the ancient
form of the Haniwa, the traditional tombs of the rulers of old
Japan.
Contents

A Bomb Dome Peace Bell

Statue of a bomb Hiroshima National Peace
Children Memorial Hall for Atomic
Bomb Victims
Atomic Bomb Memorial
Mound Hiroshima Peace
Memorial Museum
Cenotaph for Korean
Victims Peace Gates
Memorial Cenotoph Hiroshima Peace
Memorial Ceremony
Peace Flame
The A – Bomb Dome
•It is the skeletal ruins of the former
Industrial Promotion Hall.
•It is the building closest to the
hypocenter of the nuclear bomb that
remained at least partially
standing.
• It was left how it was after the
bomb in memory of the bombing.
•It is probably the most well-known
symbol of the park.
The Statue of the A-Bomb Children.

•It is dedicated to the memory of the

children who died as a result of the
bombing.
•The statue is of a girl Sadako Sasaki,
with outstretched arms with a crane
rising above her.

Atomic Bomb Memorial Mound.

•The Atomic Bomb Memorial Mound is a
large, grass-covered knoll
• It contains the ashes of 70,000
unidentified victims of the bomb
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum
•It is the primary museum in the
park dedicated to educating
visitors about the bomb.
•The Museum has exhibits and
information covering the build up
to war, the role of Hiroshima in the
war up to the bombing, and
extensive information on the
bombing and its effects, along with
substantial memorabilia and
pictures from the bombing.
•The building also offers some
marvelous views of the Memorial
Cenotaph, Peace Flame, and A-
Bomb
The Memorial Cenotaph.
•Near the center of the park is a
concrete, saddle-shaped monument that
covers a Cenotaph holding the names of
all of the people killed by the bomb.
• The Cenotaph carries the epitaph,
"Repose ye in Peace, for the error shall
not be repeated."
•Through the monument you can see the
Peace Flame and the A-Bomb Dome.

Hiroshima National Peace Memorial

Hall
•The Hall of Remembrance which
contains a a 360 degree panorama of
the destroyed Hiroshima recreated
using 140,000 tiles - the number of
people estimated to have died from
the bomb by the end of 1945.
3.1.2 St. Mary's Cathedral, Tokyo,Japan
•Date: 1963
•Building Type: Church
•Construction System:
Concrete
•Climate: Temperate
•Context: Urban
•Style: Modern
•Notes: Up-sweeping
hyperbolic paraboloid
roofs.
An Interior View
Comments
The plan of the building is in
the form of a cross, from which
the walls, eight hyperbolic
parabolas, rise up at an angle.
These open upwards to form a
cross of light which continues
vertically the length of the four
facades.
To this rhomboid volume other
secondary constructions are
added.
their rectangular volumes
contrasting with the symbolic
character of the cathedral with
which they communicate by
way of pathways and
platforms.
•The bell tower is 60 m in
height and stands at a little
distance from the cathedral
proper, whose interior is
finished in exposed concrete.
•The exterior surfaces are clad
in stainless steel, which gives
them a special radiance in
keeping with the religious
character of the building."
•The baptistery and the
baptismal font are among these
secondary buildings.
3.1.3 Fuji Broadcasting Center. Tokyo , Japan
• Date: circa 1990
• Building
Type:broadcasting center,
commercial offices
• Construction System:
metal cladding
• Climate: Temperate
• Context: Urban
• Style: Modern, Neo-
Metabolist
• Notes: Square tubes and
blocks mega structure
with sphere.
Plan - Fuji Broadcasting Center · Tokyo, Japan
Interior Views
3.1.4 Tokyo City Hall
•Date: 1991
•Building Type: broadcasting
center, publishing building,
commercial offices
•Construction System: metal
cladding
•Climate: Temperate
•Context: Urban
•Style: Modern, Neo-
Regionalist
•Notes: A pair of tall
geometric towers
•Details :Two towers, 243
meters and 163 meters tall.
3.1.5 The National Gymnasium de Yoyogi (Tokyo)
•Twin gymnasiums designed for the 1964 Tokyo
Olympics
3.1.6.U.O.B. Plaza. Singapore
Date: May 1995.
Location: Singapore.
Client: United Overseas Bank.
Area: 131,887 sq. mts.
structure: Steel; Reinforced concrete.
Materials: Granite.
Cost: US$290 million.
Award: Best Building Design Award.
Site - Plan
 Upper Floor Plan
Lower Floor Plan
Section
Contributions and Achievements:
Awards/Publications/Writings/Exhibitions/
Lectures/Discoveries
In 1949, he won the contest for the Park of Peace and the
museum of the atomic bomb, which he builds in the center
of the reappearing city of Hiroshima.
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
He received Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate ,1987
Chronology of Works

2005: Hwa Chang Institution Boarding Institute,

Singapore
2003: The Linear –Private Apartments, Singapore
2000: Tokyo Dome Hotel
2000: Kagawa Government Perfectural Building, the
main offices, Takamatsu, Kagawa
1998: WKC Center for Health Department, Kobe, Hyogo
1998: University of Bahrain, Sakhir, Bahrain
1996: Fuji Television Building, Odaiba, Tokyo
1991: Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building,
Shinjuku
1991: Tokyo City Hall
1986: Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
1979: Hanae Mori Building Aoyama, Tokyo
1970: Site of Expo’70, Snita, Osaka
1964: Yoyogi National Gymnasium for the 1964 Summer
Olympics, Tokyo
1964: St. Mary’s Cathedral(Tokyo Cathedral) (Roman
Catholic), Tokyo
1960: Kurashiki City Hall, Kurashiki,Okayama
1958: Kagawa Perfectural Government Building the east
offices, Takamatsu,Kagawa
1957: (Former) Tokyo Metropolitan Government,
Yurakucho
1955: Hiroshima Peace Memorial Building, Hiroshima
4.0 Bibliography/Webliography
Kanzo Tange And URTEC
Works Of Kanzo Tange and Urtec
Twentieth Century Architecture
Architecture And Architects
Kanzo Tange