Noboru Kawazoe, Kiyonori Kikutake, Hon. FAIA, Fumihiko Maki, Hon. FAIA, and other Japanese architects, working under the direction of Kenzo Tange, published a bilingual manifesto in 1960 that outlined how modern Japan would emerge following the destruction of World War II. Their goals as explained in “Metabolism 1960: Proposals for a New Urbanism” were not so practical as all that—the Metabolists were concerned with atomic, organic growth, how individual buildings should develop in form and over time. Nevertheless, the vision of Japan that they conceived, expressed in both unrealized and unrealizable plans as well as experimental architectural buildings, predicted the whimsy, density, and flow of contemporary Tokyo. Through texts, models, photographs, and drawings, Metabolism: The City of the Future, on view at the Mori Art Museum, examines how Metabolism itself evolved from postwar theory to Modernist principle to global expression. Through Jan. 15. • mori.art.museum/eng/
