In the following interview with Paul Tange, the chairman and senior principal architect at Tange Associates in Tokyo, we discussed the relationship with his famous architect-father Kenzo Tange (1913-2005; the most influential architect in postwar Japan and the winner of the 1987 Pritzker Prize), the fate of the house Tange senior built for his first family, the decision of joining his father’s practice right after graduation from Harvard, sharing his father’s design principles, and the vision behind his first independent built work – a 50-story Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower in Tokyo, a vertical campus that can accommodate up to 10,000 students; the project won an international competition, in which 50 international architects participated.
Paul Tange was born in Tokyo in 1958. He graduated from Harvard College in 1981, taking liberal art courses from different departments, including art, history, science, economics, and additional classes from MIT. He then focused on architecture, obtaining his master’s degree from GSD in 1985, and joined his father’s firm right after graduation. He has been heading his company since 1997. Apart from his Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower (2008), Tange junior is known for such projects as One Raffles Place Tower 2 in Singapore (2012), right next to One Raffles Place Tower 1 designed by Tange senior (1986), Henderson 688 Plaza office tower in Shanghai (2015), and the Yoyogi National Gymnasium renovation for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the building that was originally designed by Kenzo Tange for the Tokyo Olympics in 1964.
Before turning to the interview with Paul Tange, it will be apt to mention a few of his father’s finest built works. They include the architect’s elegant house (1953, demolished), the cross-shaped St. Mary’s Cathedral in Tokyo (1964), the ceremonial Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum (1955), the brutalist megastructure of the Yamanashi Broadcasting and Press Center (1966), the metabolist structure of Shizuoka Press and Broadcasting Center in Tokyo (1967), the twin-tower building of Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office or City Hall (1991), and two uniquely twisted unequal towering forms of the United Overseas Bank Plaza in Singapore (1995).
Vladimir Belogolovsky: How do you see your company, which is so much rooted in the work of your father?
Paul Tange: Our company was founded by my father in 1946, and I joined him in 1985, immediately after graduating from Harvard. I worked with him for twenty years. My father designed a number of important iconic buildings in Japan starting in the late-1940s. From the mid-60s, he began going abroad more often, particularly starting after the 1963 Skopje earthquake in Macedonia, part of the former Yugoslavia, for which he worked on the 1965 reconstruction plan. From that point on, more projects abroad followed, including in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and all over Asia. To this day, about three-quarters of our projects are outside of Japan. Our focus today is on Asia. At this moment, we are working in ten countries. We have 80 people overall – 50 here in Tokyo and the rest in Singapore, Taipei, Shanghai, and Jakarta branch offices. For a long time, we maintained an office in Paris, but it was closed in the 90s. We didn’t want to be everywhere. My father believed that our practice should never grow beyond 100 people, otherwise, there is a risk of losing control of design quality. When he led the firm, every key drawing had to go through him. I also get involved in every major issue of every project. Of course, there are many designers, but key decisions are made by one leader.
VB: As the son of Kenzo Tange, do you think you had no choice but to become an architect?
PT: Well, I had a choice. My father never pushed me to become an architect. But you are right; ours was not a typical family, and, for example, for us to go on family trips meant visiting construction sites in places like Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Italy, or the U.S. When I was 14, my parents sent me to a boarding school in Switzerland because the Japanese economy at that point slowed down and my parents were increasingly on the road, so we could see each other more frequently if I studied in Europe than in Japan. It is true everything my family did was always related to architecture, so I was always exposed to it. Even though my father never pushed me to go into the business, I didn’t really know as much about other professions, so it happened naturally.
VB: I assume you grew up in the famous house that your father designed and built in 1953. Could you talk about your experience living there?
PT: You know, I never lived in that house. I grew up in a condominium. The house you are referring to was built by my father with his first wife. That house was eventually turned down.
VB: What happened?
PT: He didn’t want to keep that house. There is now another building that stands there.
VB: Wasn’t it an important structure for him? It is cited in many books on Japanese houses.
PT: I think he demolished it for a reason… He would say, “It isn’t good for an architect to design his own house.” He joked that every family member could complain, but he, the architect, couldn’t do that.
VB: Did you follow his advice?
PT: In a way… I designed our family’s second home, but far away, in Australia. Many years ago, my father bought land there without much of a plan. Then he realized that he could not simply keep it undeveloped and had to build something there within one year. So, he came to me and asked me to design a house. He gave me a budget and I designed that house. So yes, I designed my own house, even though I never lived there. And here in Tokyo, I followed my father’s advice and did not design a house for my family because I didn’t want everyone complaining about it, and not being able to complain myself. I’ve designed houses for my good friends, but very few. A house is a very personal project; I feel that I must understand the person well for that.
VB: At what point did you decide to study architecture?
PT: I remember being on a trip with my father on a hot summer day in Bologna, Italy. Everything was closed, and we had a very bad meal at the central train station. I told him about my decision over that meal. There was a long silence, and then he said: “All right, it’s your life. Do what you really want to do.” Now that I recall it, I tend to think that as we sat in silence, he was really happy for me. I think any father should be happy to hear about his son wanting to follow in his footsteps. I am sure he was also thinking about how hard it is to be an architect, a good one, anyway. He was both happy and concerned.
VB: When you were at Harvard, your father was at the top of his fame, and surely you studied his works as a student. Still, why did you start working for him right after graduation? Didn’t you want to learn something by working for other architects before joining his firm?
PT: I had no choice about that.
VB: It was his decision.
PT: Yes. I submitted my thesis project on my birthday, January 31st. My father called me that day, which was rare, as it was typically my mother who called, and she would pass the phone to my father after a few words saying, “Here. It’s your son.” But on that day, it was he who called. I thought – oh, he either remembered my birthday or he wanted to know how I did on my thesis. I was very happy, but it was neither of those things. He started, “I reserved your ticket. You get on the plane tomorrow to come back to Tokyo. I will have two hours to explain my project to you. There is an important presentation in Japan, but I must go to Paris. Don’t worry, my deputy is going to present it and you just sit there. We need Tange in the room.” That’s how I started working for my father.
VB: How was it working for him? How would you describe your father’s influence on you professionally?
PT: I started by simply being a part of the team. I don’t think he treated me differently from any of the other architects in his firm. There was no preferential treatment. As a young architect, I learned like everyone else. The younger architects learned by observing him and the senior architects. Also, I traveled with him a lot and could listen and watch him up close during design critiques, presentations to clients, and in so many situations and settings. I learned and grew as an architect and eventually took over our firm. I became the director and assumed the duties of a leader, first starting with foreign projects. What I know about architecture, I mainly learned from my experience working with my father.
VB: Could you touch on your design process?
PT: We typically give every team member a few days to come up with design ideas, then we discuss them and narrow them down by the process of elimination. Not always does the original design idea come from the lead designer. From the beginning of the design process, we work as a team. And, for example, because of that, we always go on vacation at the same time. We shut down the office twice a year – for a couple of weeks in summer and at the end of the year. This way we always have full teams and the same people work together on their projects without interruptions. Architecture cannot be created by only one person. The new Tokyo City Hall was a very important design competition in the late 1980s. We probably did over one hundred schemes for that. My father was a very good listener and he was good at capturing an idea, even if it was very rough, he could see the potential right away. Of course, the final design decision was always his, just as now it is mine. But sometimes I step back as a manager and give the lead to the project designer. In my father’s time, every project that came out of this office was a “Kenzo Tange” project.
VB: The new City Hall replaced his own old Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office. Some local architects felt that the 1957 building, which was demolished just 30 years later, was important to preserve. What did he think of that?
PT: He was absolutely unsentimental even about his own work, such as in the case of his own house. So, if his building was obsolete, he was the first to say, “Let’s tear it down and move on.”
VB: Could you talk about your 50-story Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower in Tokyo?
PT: This project started in 2006. It was a very important project for me personally because it was my first major work since my father’s passing just one year earlier. It was an open international competition, in which more than 50 architects participated, and everyone was wondering how Tange’s office was going to do now without Kenzo. So, winning this competition with such an iconic building was a major milestone for me. The Cocoon Tower has received many prizes, including the 2008 Skyscraper of the year by Emporis Skyscraper Award. The main concept was to house three colleges – a fashion institute, computer science, and medical school – on a very small plot of land. So, a tower was the only possible solution. The cocoon metaphor was adapted early on and this is how we named the building even during the competition stage because, in a way, students are in a cocoon and they need to be nourished into life. Once educated they become “butterflies” and fly away to face the real world. I think buildings need to represent the activities that are taking place within them. It was also important in this case to create an iconic building. It was both required by the client and appropriate for the program. The elliptical shape of the building is like a cocoon; it provides more open space on the ground level and is more compelling against the sky.
VB: I want to finish this conversation by reading a quote from your father’s 1987 Pritzker Prize acceptance speech. He said, "I do not wish to repeat what I have done. I find that every project is a springboard to the next, always advancing forward from the past to the ever-changing future."
PT: I hope we are following his belief and I think we are. We are very fortunate to have such a solid background and to be able to carry on exploring new interpretations for new architecture. Architecture is always about its own time and about the future.
