Kengo Kuma - Kengo Kuma: My Life as an Architect in Tokyo

Built as the swimming and diving venue for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the Yoyogi National Gymnasium, designed by Kenz Tange (19132005), became a symbol of the event. By hosting the Olympic Games, Japan was showing the world it had fully recovered from the destruction it had sustained during the war.

Other projects completed in time for the Games include the Tkaid Shinkansen, the worlds fastest railway at the time, and the Shuto Expressway, a network of motorways built in the sky above Tokyo, which featured in the Soviet sci-fi film Solaris (1972). Another building, the Komazawa Gymnasium, a stunning concrete tower designed by Yoshinobu Ashihara (19182003), was inspired by pagoda design and hosted the wrestling events.

The year 1964 also marked the peak of Japans rapid economic development, the result of a deliberate process of industrialization undertaken with unusual speed. This exultant national mood was translated splendidly into architectural form by Tange, who led the modernist movement in postwar Japan. Known as the worlds Tange, he designed buildings in over thirty countries, and was seen as having an uncanny ability to accurately predict and interpret the spirit of the age.

Anticipating that the height of buildings would increase across Japan, Tange proposed a vertically orientated design for the Yoyogi National Gymnasium, with two concrete towers and a roof suspended between them. Japanese cities at the time were made up entirely of wooden structures, one or two storeys high, and this striking design stood out dramatically. (Japans first skyscraper, the Kasumigaseki Building, wasnt completed until four years later, in 1968.)

The gymnasiums structure was supported by a system used primarily in civil-engineering projects like suspension bridges. Tanges daring design earned widespread praise, and seemed to be showing the world that Japanese technology had caught up with that of the West. The beautiful sweeping curve of the roof has been compared to the gentle curves of the Golden Hall (kond) of Tshdai-ji, the famous eighth-century temple at Nara, while the supporting pillars appear to be influenced by the chigi (forked roof finials) of buildings such as the Ise Grand Shrine in Mie Prefecture. Tanges great talent lay in combining traditional Japanese aesthetics with cutting-edge architectural techniques.

Our design for the National Stadium (), the centrepiece for the second Tokyo Olympics in 2021, was also very inspired by traditional Japanese architecture. But while Tange aspired to verticality, we looked to horizontality, believing that pre-1964 Tokyo, with its low wooden silhouettes, was a better model for the city of the future.

Even after the 1964 Olympics were over, I was unable to get Tanges gymnasium out of my mind, and at weekends I would travel by train from Yokohama to swim in the building. Watching the light falling from the top of the beautiful arched ceiling made me feel as if I was in heaven. As I swam silently, I would think to myself how I, too, wanted to create buildings that would, someday, move people in this way.

The 1964 Tokyo Olympics marked the peak of Japans economic development ... This exultant national mood was translated splendidly into architectural form by Kenz Tange.