001 Motorized Mobility Through Idealized Planning—Kenzo Tange’s Plan for Tokyo Bay

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year: 2022
type: academic writing

for: arch1901 Critical and global histories of architecture
faculty: Michael Moynihan
institution: cornell university

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The availability, reliability, and mobility offered by public transportation in the modern city have disincentivized the use of automobiles as a means of conveyance; the pitfalls of parking and urban congestion have decayed the efficiency of the automobile. It does not have to be this way, however; maybe it is not the car that is the problem, but instead it is the city that surrounds the car that needs to be refitted. This idea was at the core of Japanese architect Kenzo Tange’s A Plan for Tokyo Bay. Conceived during the height of Tokyo’s exponential population growth following the destruction of Japan in World War II, Tange’s plan aimed to revitalize Tokyo and equip it with the means to bear a population of over 10,000,000. Kenzo Tange believed that communication was the lifeblood of modern society and that mobility through transportation was the enzyme that actuated this process, but the contemporary structure of Tokyo was inhibiting this and crumbling under the weight of its population. The Plan for Tokyo Bay stands as a monument in the ephemeral history of Japanese Metabolist Architecture for its proposed regenerative growth and the biological inspirations for its design, but this paper will not be discussing those aspects; this paper will discuss how Kenzo Tange’s obsession with the automobile drove him to the point where he created an impossible plan for construction. In Kenzo Tange’s Plan for Tokyo Bay, the architect conceptualized a symbolic reimagining of Tokyo where the mobility offered by the automobile was no longer bound by the archaic structure of the city.