Kenzō Tange

Born in Sakai in 1913 and raised between China and southern Japan, Tange fell under the spell of Le Corbusier early and designed his first buildings under Imperial Japan. Recognition came when postwar Japan needed rebuilding: his Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park turned a vaporized city into a place of reckoning. Engagement with the Congres Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne in the 1950s made him one of the first Japanese architects the world paid attention to. He built major projects on five continents, mentored the metabolist movement, and pitched ambitious urban plans that inspired the recon…