Ise: Prototype of Japanese Architecture

by Kenzo Tange, Noboru Kawazoe

Hardcover, 212pp.

Genres: Architecture

190 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Kenzō Tange 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. Tange was also an influential patron of the Metabolist movement. 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), a reference to the architectural movement known as Dutch Structuralism.
Influenced from an early age by the Swiss modernist, Le Corbusier, Tange gained international recognition in 1949 when he won the competition for the design of Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. He was a member of CIAM (Congres Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne) in the 1950s. He did not join the group of younger CIAM architects known as Team X, though his 1960 Tokyo Bay plan was influential for Team 10 in the 1960s, as well as the group that became Metabolism.
His university studies on urbanism put him in an ideal position to handle redevelopment projects after the Second World War. His ideas were explored in designs for Tokyo and Skopje. Tange's work influenced a generation of architects across the world.

Reviews

[Peggy]

Beautiful black and white photography and interesting information about this sacred Japanese site. It's more a book to "continue" to read over a long period of time and return to time and again than something to be read through beginning to end. I've had this book since I worked for the publisher, The MIT Press, in the late 60's and just recently picked it up and started reading and looking through it again. It's one of the books I keep "out" in my living room.

[Jonathan Cross]

Excellent b&w photos reveal the photographers sensitivity to the subject. The writing is insightful but I wish they spent more time talking about the construction of the temples. All together a great book for beginning to understand japanese architecture, sense of space, and aesthetic.