From Tokyo Bay Planning to Urban Utopias

The architects and designers of the Metabolist Group are the well-known authors of a series of bold projects and utopian visions of futuristic cities and technological architectures which spread from Japan to the world from the early 1960s. Indeed the city of Tokyo was the cradle of this burst of creativity and ambition to reshape the form of the modern city, and it was primarily the frantic change of her mutating urban environment which inspired the urban visions of a group of young professionals and critics with the tacit support of the cultural elites and the economic and political powers. This study investigates the links between Metabolism and the cultural and socio-economic context of post-war Japan, and contributes to a further understanding of the origins of the most relevant concepts and ideas behind the several projects for “Marine Cities”, “Cities in the Sky”, “Capsule Architectures” and “Artificial Land” which had a fundamental impact on the architectural discourse of the period. This book will be of interest to architects, scholars and anyone else interested in modern Japanese architecture and architectural and urban history.