Tange on Tange

Paul Noritake Tange, the son of Kenzo Tange spoke about his father’s work at the Art Gallery of NSW on Wednesday evening. You could feel the importance and wealth emanating from this fellow. He kept things simple, interesting, and often amusing, but it lacked the personal anecdotes I was hoping for. Still it’s interesting how your perception of what appears to be a concrete rectangle with windows can change entirely once you’re told the philosophy behind it.

The four points underpinning Tange’s works are; a rejection of functionalism (that is, a genuine spirit and aesthetic must lay behind utility), unity between technology and traditional design, attention to the layout of urban space, and the importance of open-air space for communication (of the agora/piazza sort. In fact an open area before the TMG building is directly modelled on Michelangelo’s Capitoline Hill).

On the incorporation of traditional structural features, look at the Kagawa Prefectural Government Office; just how the level roofs and windows reinterpret the beams and posts of buildings like the Ise Shrine and Katsura Villa, with a strong emphasis on light and shadow. Though light was used most stunningly within the Tokyo Olympic Stadium and St. Mary’s Cathedral.

Finally, too, I understand his notion of a ‘linear city’, which baffled me when earlier studying his 1960 Tokyo Bay plan. Simply, looking at the rapid radial growth of the Tokyo metropolis, he envisioned instead a model that allowed the urban centre to expand horizontally along a central ‘spine’, extending as needed, and allowing for cleaner transportation through the centre. The 1960 plan of course fancifully pushed the heart of the city into Tokyo Bay itself.

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------------------------------------ City Centre Spine

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He also spoke about recent projects. The Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower, completed last year, was Tange Associates first competition-winning design since Kenzo Tange’s death. It is a 50-story building containing three schools. One priority in design was based in that principle of communication, the corridor and schoolyard reinterpreted as large atriums every three stories, opening in three dimensions (one reaching another by a balcony or staircase). It’s elliptical form comes from this also, allowing for greenery and open space at the structures base, and the tapered top meant to reveal more sky, the same reason that the TMG Office rises in twin towers rather than one heavy block. It’s shape was also intended to differentiate it further as a school from ordinary office buildings. The name comes both from its shape, and alluding symbolically to its purpose as a school to nurture the potentiality of children. He was proud, he said, when taken directly there by a taxi driver after asking for “that strange new building”.