Architects: Kenzo Tange
Area: 1500 m²
Year: 1967
Photographs: Design Observer
City: Chuo
Country: Japan
The Shizuoka Press and Broadcasting Center, completed in 1967 in Tokyo’s Ginza district by Kenzo Tange, embodies the architect’s Metabolist vision of organic, self-sustaining architecture. Built on a 189-square-meter triangular site, the structure features a 7.7-meter-diameter cylindrical core rising 57 meters, housing essential facilities such as stairs, elevators, kitchens, and sanitary areas. This core serves as the central beam for 13 modular glass-and-steel office units, each measuring 3.5 meters and cantilevered asymmetrically. While designed to accommodate future expansion through additional “plug-in” units, the building remains as originally completed, showcasing Tange’s concept of a modular urban megastructure. Emerging in post-World War II Japan, Metabolism viewed cities as dynamic, evolving systems, blending technology and organic principles. Though much of the movement’s work remained theoretical, it had a profound influence on modern architecture, inspiring projects such as the Nakagin Capsule Tower and global figures like Reyner Banham and Archigram. The Shizuoka Press and Broadcasting Center stands as a realized testament to this visionary movement.
“Architects today tend to depreciate themselves, to regard themselves as no more than just ordinary citizens without the power to reform the future.”
– Kenzo Tange
Completed in 1967, this building marked the first physical manifestation of Tange’s Metabolist concepts of organically-inspired structural growth, developed in the late 1950s. Despite its modest scale, the Shizuoka Press and Broadcasting Center holds profound architectural significance, embodying the principles of the new Metabolist order that shaped architecture and urban planning in post-World War II Japan.
Located in the Ginza district of Tokyo, the Shizuoka Press and Broadcasting Center provided Kenzo Tange with an opportunity to bring his Metabolist ideals to life. These ideals envisioned a new urban typology capable of organic and vernacular self-perpetuation in a “metabolic” fashion. The compact 189-square-meter triangular site led Tange to design a vertical structure centered around a primary infrastructural core. This core was conceived as a framework for an urban megastructure—a concept introduced by fellow Metabolist architect Fumihiko Maki—capable of accommodating an unlimited number of prefabricated capsules that could be incrementally “plugged-in.”
The infrastructural core of the Shizuoka Press and Broadcasting Center was a 7.7-meter-diameter cylinder rising to a height of 57 meters. It housed stairs, two elevators, and kitchen and sanitary facilities on each floor. This central core functioned as an access shaft to the modular office units—cantilevered glass and steel boxes measuring 3.5 meters each—that extended from alternating sides of the core.
The Shizuoka Press and Broadcasting Center featured thirteen individual office units arranged in five groups of two or three modules, asymmetrically connected to the central beam. Balconies were created in the spaces between these clusters, designed to accommodate additional units that could be “plugged-in” over time—a concept that ultimately remained unrealized. As a result, the structure today retains the same number of units as when it was completed in 1967, leaving Kenzo Tange’s Metabolist vision for a perpetually evolving, prefabricated urban megastructure unfulfilled.
The utopian ideals of Metabolism emerged in post-World War II Japan during the nation’s recovery from devastation and its transition into rapid economic growth. Kenzo Tange, while not an official member of the Metabolist group, acted as a mentor and advocate for its principles, presenting the movement’s concepts at the CIAM congress in 1959. These ideas were further developed by Tange and his students during his tenure as a guest professor at MIT. The group’s manifesto, Metabolism: The Proposals for New Urbanism, published in 1960, began with the following declaration:
“Metabolism is the name of the group, in which each member proposes further designs of our coming world through his concrete designs and illustrations. We regard human society as a vital process – a continuous development from atom to nebula. The reason why we use such a biological word, metabolism, is that we believe design and technology should be a denotation of human society. We are not going to accept metabolism as a natural process, but try to encourage active metabolic development of our society through our proposals.”
While many of the Metabolist group’s concepts remained theoretical, their visionary proposals, such as the “Tower-Shaped City,” and built works, including the 1970 Expo in Osaka and the Nakagin Capsule Tower (1972), had a profound influence on numerous 20th-century architects across both the East and West. These ideas left a lasting impact on figures like historian Reyner Banham and the British avant-garde group Archigram.
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Address: 8 Chome-3-7 Ginza, Chuo City, Tokyo, 104-0061, Japan
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