Shizuoka Tower

Kenzo Tange – Shizuoka Press and Broadcasting Center, Tokyo Japan, 1967

Built in Tokyo’s Ginza district, Shizuoka’s Print and Broadcasting Center gave Tange the chance to materialize its Metabolist ideals, which required a new urban typology that could self-perpetuate in an organic, dialectal, “metabolic” way. The narrow 189 square meter triangular site inspired Tange to design a vertical structure, consisting of a main infrastructural core, which could be transformed into an urban megastructure (a term coined by a Metabolist colleague, the Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki), in which a the ever-increasing number of prefabricated capsules could be “inserted”.