Kenzo Tange

nihongo|Kenzo Tange|丹下健三|Tange Kenzō|extra=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 (architecture). 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", (cited in "Plan" 2/1982, Amsterdam).

Biography

Tange was born in Sakai, Osaka in 1913. He moved to Hankou, Shanghai and later England, with his banker father, back to Japan in 1920. Tange was strongry influenced by Le Corbusier's books and thought to be an architect in his secondary school days.

In 1935, Tange attended at the Department of Engineering, the University of Tokyo, where he studied architecture, completed his degree and worked as a professional architect at the studio of Kunio Maekawa. Tange worked a few years there and left, backed to the University of Tokyo to study postgraduate course in 1941. Tange became an assistant professor and opened Tange laboratory in 1946; he was promoted to professor of the Department of Urban Engineering in 1963. As a professor, Tange his students included Sachio Otani, Kisho Kurokawa, Arata Isozaki, and Fumihiko Maki who have inherited Tange's architectural style and his philosophy.

In 1949, Tange won the architecture competition for design of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, Hiroshima city, following its atomic bombing in 1945. His design for Peace Memorial Park owes much to Le Corbusier and is often called "the spiritual core of the city."Fact|date=September 2007 One reason Tange gave for applying for the job was that he had studied in the city as a secondary student.

Tange won international fame for his design for the gymnasium for the 1964 Summer Olympics held in Tokyo. His Pritzker Prize citation described it as "among the most beautiful buildings of the 20th century."

He was also known for his "Tokyo Plan" of 1960, which proposed a radical redesign of the city. Although not fully implemented, it influenced architects worldwide. In the 1960s he also designed the new master plan for the capital city of the Republic of Macedonia Skopje, which was heavily damaged by the 1963 earthquake. This plan was also only partially implemented. Tange received AIA Gold Medal in 1966, the Order of Culture in 1980, and the order of the Sacred Treasures in 1994.

In 2005, his funeral was held in one of his works, Tokyo Cathedral.

Selected projects

*2005: Hwa Chong Institution Boarding School, Singapore
*2003: The Linear - Private Apartments, Singapore
*2000: Tokyo Dome Hotel
*2000: Kagawa Prefectural Government Building the main offices, Takamatsu, Kagawa
*1998: WKC Centre For Health Development, Kobe, Hyōgo
*1998: University of Bahrain, Sakhir, Bahrain
*1996: Fuji Television Building, Odaiba, Tokyo
*1991: Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, Shinjuku
*1987: American Medical Association Headquarters Building, Chicago, Illinois, USA
*1986: Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
*1982: Central Area New Federal Capital City of Nigeria, Nigeria
*1979: Hanae Mori Building Aoyama, Tokyo
*1977: [Sogetsu Kaikan] [http://www.sogetsu.or.jp/english/hall/index.html] Aoyama, Tokyo
*1970: Site of Expo '70, Suita, Osaka
*1966: Master plan for rebuilding of Skopje, Republic of Macedonia, then part of Yugoslavia after the 1963 earthquake
*1964: Yoyogi National Gymnasium for the 1964 Summer Olympics, Tokyo
*1960: Kurashiki City Hall, Kurashiki, Okayama
*1958: Kagawa Prefectural Government Building the east offices, Takamatsu, Kagawa
*1957: (Former) Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, Yūrakuchō
*1955: St. Mary's Cathedral (Tokyo Cathedral) (Roman Catholic), Tokyo
*1955: Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, Hiroshima

External links

* [http://www.ktaweb.com/en_index2.html Official website]
* [http://citymayors.com/cityhalls/tokyo_cityhall.html Profile of Tokyo Metropolitan Buildings]