YAMANASHI PRESS AND BROADCASTING CENTRE

Kofu, Yamanashi-ken, Japan

__________________________


Also called the Kofu Communications Centre, this building is the main 
central home for the mass communication media of the entire the 
Yamanashi region.  Within its bulk are a radio station, newspaper head 
offices, commercial offices, and ground floor shopping areas.

Designed by Kenzo Tange and completed in 1966, the Kofu Communications 
Centre represents one of the few successful buildings inspired by the 
Japanese Metabolist movement, which called for architecture and cities 
to represent organic processes of growth and change.  Most Metabolist 
designs used trees as analogies, with a main structure representing a 
trunk or structural branches onto which smaller living and working 
units were attached like leaves or pods.  Ideally, this smaller units 
could be removed, interchanged, or expanded as necessary, thus 
capturing a sense of evolution.  In this rather subdued example, Tange 
provides 16 main tubular service cores, between which layers of 
occupiable space is inserted, almost hung from corner clips attached 
to the tubes frame.  The entire composition, makes the building seem 
incomplete, and unused clips suggest that further vertical and 
horizontal expansion with more inserted layers of floors could be 
possible.


Created by Lee Sojot
