ABSTRACT
Visionary urban plans often serve as utopian projects to formulate certain social ideals. This phenomenon is more conspicuous in societies that are undergoing dramatic transitions politically, economically, or aesthetically. Italy in the early Renaissance, France during the period of great revolution, and Europe as a whole at the dawn of the twentieth century have provided some of the best examples of such utopian projects. Japanese society in the late 1950s and the 1960s turned out to be another fertile ground that nourished visionary urban designs. These Japanese utopian projects were closely associated with the avant-garde movement called Metabolism, which was launched in 1960, when a group of young architects and designers published their manifesto – Metabolism: The Proposals for New Urbanism – at the World Design Conference in Tokyo.1
