"Nevertheless, the basic forms, spaces, and appearances must be logical"
About this Quote
“Nevertheless” is doing a lot of work here: it signals a quiet rebuttal to architecture’s recurring temptations - spectacle, symbolism, the seductions of style. Kenzo Tange, coming of age amid Japan’s wartime ruin and its postwar reinvention, is staking out a non-negotiable baseline. You can chase monumentality, tradition, even utopian urban schemes, but the bones have to add up. “Basic” doesn’t mean bland; it means foundational: plan, section, circulation, the way light lands, the way bodies move. “Forms, spaces, and appearances” lays out a full stack, from structure to experience to image, insisting that the visible must be accountable to the invisible.
The word “logical” also carries the baggage of its era. Postwar modernism sold itself as rational, socially responsible, immune to the ornamental excesses that had come to feel politically compromised. For Tange, logic isn’t just math; it’s ethics. In a rapidly modernizing Japan, where cities were being remade at scale and speed, “logic” becomes a safeguard against arbitrary power - the architect’s ego, the state’s grand narratives, the developer’s shortcuts.
Subtext: modern architecture is allowed to be expressive only after it proves it can function. Tange’s best-known work often reads as dramatic - sweeping roofs, heroic concrete, Metabolist megastructural ambition - but this line reveals the discipline underneath. The drama is permitted because the underlying grammar is rigorous.
The word “logical” also carries the baggage of its era. Postwar modernism sold itself as rational, socially responsible, immune to the ornamental excesses that had come to feel politically compromised. For Tange, logic isn’t just math; it’s ethics. In a rapidly modernizing Japan, where cities were being remade at scale and speed, “logic” becomes a safeguard against arbitrary power - the architect’s ego, the state’s grand narratives, the developer’s shortcuts.
Subtext: modern architecture is allowed to be expressive only after it proves it can function. Tange’s best-known work often reads as dramatic - sweeping roofs, heroic concrete, Metabolist megastructural ambition - but this line reveals the discipline underneath. The drama is permitted because the underlying grammar is rigorous.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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