Modern Japanese Architecture

Watanabe Jin...: The rules of the competition stipulated that the museum must be in an "Eastern style that is based on Japanese taste, so that it will preserve harmony with the contents of the museum. Watanabe Jin's design was a modern Western-style structure in which Japanese taste was expressed by the application of tiled-and-gabbled roofs and premodern Japanese decorative motifs. His design emphasized the mass of the walls. 

Imperial Household Museum Competition of 1931; entry submitted by Maekawa Kunio: in contrast, had a flat roof w/ no cornice.Young architects' building whose work was very modern, garden roof, windows along entire length of building for uninterrupted natural lighting for the major galleries. Critics would call it a betrayal to tradition, and modernists would praise it, since there's a pressure to express nationality/Japaneseness in modern design. Emphasized the geometric volumes walls contained

Tange Kenzo: Hiroshima Peace Park & Memorial Museum (1955): saddle shaped structure as the actual memorial statue, the shape reminds of the saddle-shaped roofs of Haniwa, it dominates the central plaza. Museum in the background.

Tange Kenzo: Project; City of 10,000,000 (1960): a few years later at MIT he and a few students propose a plan for a city of 10, 000 people to be built in Boston Harbor. He goes even further to build a city of 10 million in Tokyo harbor. These are some of the first megastructures, systems of building apartments are plugged in. 

Tange Kenzo: Olympic Gymnasia, Tokyo 1964: in collaboration with an engineer he builds it, just above it was the park dedicated to M. emperor. The building is a suspension structure. By many social historians it is ranked the pivotal event which demonstrated Japan's Economic Miracle to itself & to the world, the moment it once again entered the ranks of the "first world." 

Kurokawa Kisho (a leader of the Metabolist group, 1972); Nakagin Building, Tokyo: thought architecture should be a metabolic system. You have a structure built, and parts can be added as needed. This was an apartment building located in the city center, contained 2 central shafts. He argues ideas come from the carying containers in the premodern period. Container-type apartments are small, complete apartments. 

Ando Tadao: Koshino House, Ashija (1983): self-taught, works primarily in concrete, has some of the most elegant & sensuous design. The house has a long hall made of light-colored wood, he opens up the concrete strategically with slits. The living room provided an enormous window which casts light in a variation on the back wall as the day passes. 

Isozaki Arata: Tsukuba Center (1982): a member of the metabolites, conceives buildings as ruins; he's taken the rectilinear form of modernism and slanted it. He would selectively draw from earlier architecture. De drew on the plaza done my Michelangelo, but does everything in reverse. 

Ishii Kazuhiro: 54 Windows, Hiratsuka (1975): was built for a dentist, 54 windows are present. Certain parts, ex. circular windows are reminiscent of the tea house. Significance in numerology of number 54, the number is present in Buddhism & Islam... 

Taniguchi Yoshio: MoMa, New York (2004)