This new edition expands Zhongjie Lins pathbreaking account on Tange and Metabolism centered at the intersection of urbanism and utopianism. The thorough historical survey leads to a definition of three Metabolist urban paradigms which continue to inspire experiments in architecture, city design, and conservation.
Amid Japans political turbulence in 1960, seven architects and designers founded Metabolism to propagate radical ideas of urbanism. Kenzo Tanges Plan for Tokyo 1960 further celebrated urban expansion as organic processes and pushed city design to an unprecedented scale. Metabolists visionary schemes of future cities gave birth to revolutionary design paradigms, which reinvented the discourse of modern Japanese architecture and propelled it through the years of Economic Miracle to a global prominence. Their utopian concepts, which often envisaged the sea and the sky as human habitats of the future, reflected fundamental issues of cultural transformation and addressed environmental crises of the post-industrial society.
This new edition expands Zhongjie Lins pathbreaking account on Tange and Metabolism centered at the intersection of urbanism and utopianism. The thorough historical survey, from Metabolisms inauguration at the 1960 World Design Conference to the apex of the movement at Expo 70 and further to the demolition of Nakagin Capsule Tower, leads to a definition of three Metabolist urban paradigmsmegastructure, group form, and ruinswhich continue to inspire experiments in architecture, city design, and conservation.
Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Movement is a key book for architectural and urban historians, architects and all those interested in avant-garde design and Japanese architecture.
Foreword by Arata Isozaki
1. Introduction: City as Organism
2.
Metabolism 1960
3. Metabolist Utopias
4. Myths of Tokyo Bay
5. Structure and
Symbol
6. Expo 70
7. The Capsule Tower
8. Epilogue: Seeing the Future
through the Past
Dr. Zhongjie Lin is an architect, urban designer, and scholar of urbanism. He is Associate Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania, where he serves as director of Urban Design program. He is also founding director of Futurepolis, an awarding-winning practice of international architecture and planning. Dr. Lin is author or coauthor of several books, including Urban Design in the Global Perspective (2006), Kenz Tange and the Metabolist Movement (2010/2023), The Making of a Chinese Model New Town (2012), Vertical Urbanism (2018), and Rio de Janeiro: Urban Expansion and Environment (2019). He holds a PhD in architectural history and criticism from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.Arch. from Tongji University.
