ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects on the merits/failure’s dichotomy of early key urban architectures and planning schemes developed by the Metabolists in the context of Japan postwar urbanization and international architectural and urban discourse.
Metabolism developed its architectural experimentations and urban design principles expressly to respond to the urban infrastructural developments and mass-housing problems of postwar Japan, in a context of unprecedented economic growth, massive urban expansion, and strong technological progress. Embodying the vitality and the spirit of Japan’s vigorous economic and social regeneration after the military defeat, the visionary architectures of the Metabolists functioned as a catalyst for several innovative concepts and ideas already circulated by designers and engineers since the early 1950s. Inspired by the biological metaphor of organic growth, their urban architectures incubated and developed in a period of radical transformation in urban planning and design practice and theory, following the fading of Modernist influence. In this vacuum, the Metabolists envisioned a model of city built on technological knowledge produced by the interbreeding of different scientific disciplines, which triggered the search for radical new urban forms and architectural concepts, giving birth to peculiar and highly influential schemes and concepts which still have great relevance today.
