Kenzo Tange

Kenzo Tange(丹下健三, Tange Kenzō, 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. 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, then to Shanghai and later England, with his banker father, back to Japan in 1920. Tange was strongly 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 to go back to the University of Tokyo to study postgraduate course in 1941. Tange became an assistant professor and opened Tange laboratory in 1946. In 1963, he was promoted to professor of the Department of Urban Engineering. As a professor, 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, four years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. His design for Peace Memorial Park owes much to Le Corbusier and Tange envisioned it as the city's 'spiritual core'. One reason Tange gave for applying for the job was that he had studied in the city as a secondary student.

In 1961, Tange became the principal of the firm Kenzo Tange & Urtec (the present day Kenzo Tange & Associates), and then 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. <div style="clear: both;"></div>

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
1992: UOB Plaza, Singapore
1991: Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, Shinjuku
1987: American Medical Association Headquarters Building, Chicago, Illinois, USA
1986: OUB Centre, Singapore
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

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Translation

The phrase "Kenzo Tange" occurs as such in the following languages: English, Bosnian, Danish, Basque, Galician, Latvian, Dutch, Portuguese, Swedish.

Translation(s) in other languages: Arabic: كنزو تانغه, Catalan: Kenzō Tange, German: Kenzō Tange, Spanish: Kenzō Tange, Persian: کنزو تانگه, French: Kenzō Tange, Italian: Kenzō Tange, Hebrew: קנזו טנגה, Georgian: ტანგე კენძო, Macedonian: Кензо Танге, Japanese: 丹下健三, Polish: Kenzō Tange, Russian: Тангэ, Кэндзо, Slovak: Kenzó Tange, Serbian: Кенсо Танге, Serbo-Croatian: Kenso Tange, Finnish: Kenzō Tange, Vietnamese: Tange Kenzo, Chinese: 丹下健三.