The Tokyo Metropolitan Government Buildings by Kenzo Tange, Imperial Postmodern Masterpieces
This is a show and tell a bit about one of the world's great postmodern civic buildings (actually this is a complex of three buildings), Kenzo Tange’s (one of Japan's great 20th Century architects) imperiously elegant Tokyo Metropolitan Government complex in Nishi-Shinjuku (Tokyo's first skyscraper district that was started in the 1970s)...
Completed in 1991, the complex is an Akira-style, epically vast fusion of intricate granite-and-stainless-steel ornament that recalls circuit boards, and the towering profile of an ancient gothic cathedral… The combination of ancient reference and high-tech futuristic symbolism is intentional, and very much captures the fervid postmodern atmosphere, in which historic periods, the future, the past, the eastern and the western, were collapsing together in the hyper-speed, super-wealth of Tokyo of the 1980s.
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Above is the whole of Building Number 1, the main tower, you can see its overall silhouette which is directly based on the proportions of Notre Dame de Paris but at a vast, mind-boggling, and up to that point historically unprecedented scale. The luxurious, exact, and exquisite detailing of the buildings in the complex become overwhelming at the scale it is ramped up to, with the intense effect being as close as one can get in modern architecture to the semi-frightening awe that is felt when stood in front of a dramatic geological feature in nature... a fitting impression for the bureaucratic heart of the greatest metropolis the world has ever seen, an urban conurbation of over 38 million people, and a thrilling deviation from the somewhat trite and tired, platitudinous refrain that architecture should be "open" and "transparent" (all well and good, but it can be other things too), which most architects follow when working on public buildings these days.
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Building Number Two is like the dramatic guitar riff in a song, it acts as the crescendo of hyperactive complexity within the scheme, its combination of geometric complexity and surface articulation messes with one's ability to differentiate and comprehend shape, form and surface...
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Building Number One now has the world's largest projection mapping display on its facade, so at night it often becomes a megalopolis-scaled screen and moving architectural artwork, while both of the two towers at the top of the building have free-to-access viewing galleries, which makes this complex somewhere I would highly recommend for any architecture fans to visit when they are in Tokyo. Its only about a 15 minute walk from Shinjuku Station...
Because I am personally fascinated by these buildings, I have spent a long time creating a substantial collection on Architectural Icons celebrating it. If you also find the building interesting, please do have a browse of the prints and products in OUR COLLECTION that depict Buildings 1 & 2 of this era-defining complex. Please also have a browse of all our JAPANESE BUILDING COLLECTIONS, which include other amazing examples of the country's unique expression of Postmodernism
