Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Movement

摘要

Japan is now firmly linked with the catastrophic failure of human technology vis-a-vis natural disasters. Zhongjie Lin's book reminds its readers that not too long ago this was very different. The 1960s were not only a period of seemingly limitless confidence in man's capacity to dominate his environment (the Fukushima Power Plant was among the many outcomes of this hubris), but also one of growing dissatisfaction with an overly technicised world, which gave rise to a strange synthesis of technophilia and back-to-nature values. The proposals of the Japanese Metabolists—a group of architects who stepped into the international limelight in 1960—are among the most famous examples. It is Lin's merit to present the first comprehensive history of this movement, which so far has been much described and contex-tualised, but never properly historicised.