Kenzo Tange: beacon architecture

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This article was originally published in Domus 463 / June 1968

Kenzo Tange's Shizuoka tower: beacon architecture
The building houses the Tokyo branch offices the Shizuoka Newspaper Company; it is about a dozen stories high and occupies a site measuring about 2,000 sqm. Basically, it is a cylindrical shaft 190 ft. tall built of concrete and finished with cast aluminum panels, anodized a very dark bronze. This shaft contains elevators, stairs and utilities; and from it are cantilevered glass-enclosed capsules that contain the actual office spaces.

Kenzo Tange: "I came to the idea of building a "pillar of the city" with a meaning of indirect stimulus... I built this tower with the idea of bringing urban scale to this dynamic point of the town".

Structuring the functions of architectural and urban spaces is the theme of this building as well as of the original plan for the home office of the Dentsu Advertising Co., the Tsukiji Area Plan, and the Yamanashi Culture Center.

The two methods used in this series of works are the high-rise core shaft and the multi-level dimensional lattice. The site of this highly symbolic, single-shaft building is cramped, but the building itself, particularly when seen from the nearby highway or from the windows of the New Tokaido Super Express train, is an important landmark in the townscape.

The controlling point in the design is the determination to create a building partaking of both the urban scale and the human scale. The methodology will find fuller application in the home ottice of the Shizuoka Newspaper, currently in planning.