Metabolist school

Metabolist school

Japanese architectural movement of the 1960s. Tange Kenzo launched the movement with his Boston Harbor Project design (1959), which included two gigantic A-frames hung with “shelving” for homes and other buildings. Led by Tange, Isozaki Arata, Kikutake Kiyonori (b. 1928), and Kurokawa Kisho (b. 1934), the Metabolists focused on structures that combined high-tech imagery, Brutalism, and megastructures (multifunctional complexes that verge on self-containment). The Metabolist manifestos put out at the World Design Conference in 1960 paved the way for such later projects as Paolo Soleri's Arcosanti. Their advocacy of such devices as artificial land platforms above cities, which grew out of a desire for economy of land use, revolutionized architectural thinking.