Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Movement: Urban Utopias of Modern Japan by Zhongjie Lin (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Zhongjie Lin. Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Movement: Urban Utopias ofModern Japan. London and New York: Routledge Press, 2010, 270 pp., 154 black-and-white illustrations, paper, $53.95, ISBN 978-041577660. Although visionary social schemes date at least to Sir Thomas More's Utopia (1516), such utopian theorizing has long seemed to be a European endeavor. Zhongjie Lin corrects this impression in his recent work, Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Movement: Urban Utopias of Modern japan. In this study, Lin shows that the formative years of postwar Japanese architecture were shaped by the utopian urban theory known as Metabolism. Utopian urban plans, from the Renaissance to the present, tried to impose an order on the landscape through the use of geometry or other rationalist planning principles. They organized the city according to a system that zoned land use by activity or function. While intellectually satisfying, such a rigid system was inflexible and often failed to adapt to the rapid expanARRIS 90 ~ VoLUME 22 ~ 2011 sion of postwar cities. Therefore, in 1960 some young Japanese architects urged a radically different approach to urban planning in their manifesto, Metabolism: Proposals for a New Urbanism. In his introduction, "City as Process," Lin establishes the theme that distinguished Metabolism from other urban theory-its proponents viewed the city not as a place but as a process. The word implies a series of events or changes leading to a result. If the nature of a city is defined by change, the urban infrastructure must easily accommodate it. From this insight grew the Metabolist metaphor: the city is a living organism composed of elements with different life cycles. This idea meant that some parts of the urban structure would be permanent, while others were more ephemeral and would come and go. Advances in technology allowed this metaphor to become reality. Adopting the popular theory of megastructures , Metabolists conceived of enormous buildings large enough to hold thousands of residents to accommodate all or part of a city. Metabolist architecture and urban plans provided for a permanent core that contained circulation space, services, and other infrastructure , while smaller mass-produced modular units would be attached as needed, to be removed and replaced at the end of their service life. The service cores constituted "artificial land" for these new cities in the air and on the sea. In the 1960s, the British group Archigram also advocated cities based on megastructures and plug-in architecture, but only the Metabolists relied on such technology to restructure a city on an organic model. Chapter one in Lin's book provides the context for this phenomenon, as debates in Japan about the perceived loss of its cultural identity led the architects to a metaphor with deep roots in Japanese tradition. And, as Lin recounts in chapter two, Metabolism differed from Archigram 's work because of its idealistic social agenda. Some of its proponents hoped that a city composed of high-density megastructures would transform society from one based on private land ownership to a more communal model. The Metabolist group included young architects such as Kiyonori Kikurake (1928- ), Kisho Kurokawa (1943-2007), and Fumihiko Maki (1928- ), who were all just beginning celebrated careers. Lin's focal point is Kenzo Tange (1913-2005). He was not a formal member of the Metabolists but nevertheless played an important role by developing Metabolist principles in his own work. As the preeminent Japanese architect of the postwar era, his work received greater attention and gave credibility to the movement's visionary ideas. Thus Tange's projects form the book's central case studies, with his seminal Tokyo Plan of 1960 the subject of chapter three and his important Metabolist building designs considered in chapter four. Of Tange's masterworks , his graceful gymnasium complex for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics is perhaps the best known. Lin singles out the Yamanashi Press and Broadcasting Center of 1966, however, because it best illustrates the Metabolist principles. Lin brings together a number of threads in chapter five, as the Metabolist movement's growing prominence culminated in the 1970 World Exposition in Osaka, Japan. Tange created the master plan while other architects designed the pavilions. Here, they hoped to prove...