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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.
Kenzo Tange: beacon architecture
The Shizuoka tower symbolises and puts forward the idea of the "three-dimensional" urban structure advocated by the Japanese architect: part of a new urban megastructure, the tower is a beacon, graspable at high speed, and indicates a new concept of city.
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- 01 December 2012
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.